Groin pain is the third most common disease among football players and is often associated with hip pathologies such as femoral acetabular impingement and labral injuries.  Since hip arthroscopies allow you to treat these injuries using minimally invasive procedures, the team of doctors lead by Dr Roberto Seijas undertook a study that focused on evaluating the injuries of professional footballers and their return to play after a hip arthroscopy. 

 

In order to do this “we focused our analysis on a selection of professional players aged between 26 and 33 who compete at a national level, and had undergone a hip arthroscopy between 2009 and 2014” explained Dr Pedro Álvarez, coordinator of the Surgical and Functional Anatomy Unit at UIC Barcelona, as well as a traumatologist and a researcher for the García-Cugat Foundation and Quirón Hospital.  “All of the patients were evaluated so they could be scored using visual analogue scales (VAS) before the operation and 3, 6, 12 and 24 months after it”. 

 

In the words of Dr Roberto Seijas, traumatologist, professor of anatomy at UIC Barcelona and a researcher for the García-Cugat Foundation and Quirón Hospital, “after the arthroscopy, the average period before returning to play was 10.8 months, with an overall range of between 4 and 20 months.  Differences were not observed between inactive and active patients in terms of the final follow-up as far as chondral lesions were concerned, but significant differences were observed in relation to the treatment of cartilage, where there was a higher rate of labrectomies among inactive patients and a higher rate of suture among active patients”.  These values indicate that, although hip arthroscopies are highly safe procedures with very good results in terms of return to play, factors such as the patient’s age at the time of surgery, the condition of the labrum and low scores in the Harris Hip Score and the HOS, can predict a bad prognosis in terms of an optimal return to professional activities.