New Hip for New York – What is an acetabular labral tear?

Time to visit the surgeon. So what is an acetabular labral tear? The acetabular labrum is a ring of cartilage found in the hip socket – it stops the ball of your thigh bone from rubbing on the bone in your hip socket. The labrum functions to provide more stability to the hip joint but deepening the hip socket as well helping to counteract any distraction (pulling apart) forces. Hip pain is quite common in dancers and as a dancer I was a very left dominant one. I preferred to do splits, kicks and leaps with my left leg because it was the more ‘flexible’ side which over time means I wore down this hip and created more laxity (looseness) in that side.

Dr Molnar had a look at my MRI and hip x-rays, tested my range of movement (which was significantly less then my right side) and explained my options for treatment. Considering it had only been 4 weeks since the injury occurred he did suggest a cortisone injection to see if it would settle the pain however I a) didn’t have the time to find out if a cortisone injection would work with my trip to America + trying to work with the pain that I had, b) there are no guarantees that a cortisone injection was going to work and c) sometimes you just know where the pain is coming from, which he empathised with having had two hip arthroscopies himself.

He explained the surgery and its risks and I explained I was happy with that and had booked myself in for next week and asked if that would give me enough time to rehab before snowboarding in Jan – given he is also a snowboarder he agreed it should be fine as long as I stayed on the groomed runs at an easy pace. Easy peasy! I’m a lazy snowboarder – I sleep in and start late, take long lunches and finish early because I get tired! I made sure I asked all my questions (I had a full list of things I wanted to know being the control freak I am) and got everything prepared for surgery the following week.

Step 5 – Have surgery…TBC

Deb Chen, Physiotherapist