Expert Treatment for Hip Impingement

When the bones of your hip joint do not fit together like they should — called hip impingement — it causes hip pain and stiffness. If your hip joint does not move smoothly, it creates friction in the joint and wears away the protective cartilage.

Count on our team of orthopedic specialists to relieve pain and restore movement in your hips. Whether your treatment involves physical therapy, hip impingement exercises or advanced surgical approaches, you are in good hands. Our experts are pioneers in joint preservation and replacement procedures and have performed thousands of surgeries.

Nonsurgical Hip Impingement Treatment

Imaging exams and a hip impingement test help your doctor confirm what is causing your symptoms. During a hip impingement test, your doctor brings your knee toward your chest while you are lying down. If you have hip pain when your doctor rotates your knee toward your opposite shoulder, this means you have hip impingement.

We customize your treatment for hip impingement depending on your symptoms, hip structure and movement, amount of cartilage damage and desired activity level.

Sometimes, nonsurgical approaches can relieve symptoms:

• Over-the-counter pain medicines and avoiding activities that involve repeated hip rotation — such as golf, baseball or dance — can reduce hip pain and stiffness.
• Hip impingement physical therapy uses stretching and exercises to build strength and improve hip flexibility and movement.

Our physical therapists develop hip impingement exercises just for you and show you which movements to avoid. Physical therapy can help reduce damage to your hip joint and let you continue activities you enjoy.

Hip Impingement Surgery

If nonsurgical approaches don’t relieve your hip pain, your doctor may recommend hip impingement surgery. Our orthopedic surgeons have advanced expertise in the latest hip impingement procedures, including hip replacement.

We offer hip impingement surgery to help:

• Adjust the angle of the hip joint socket to allow the ball of the joint to fit better
• Remove excess bone or cartilage from the hip joint socket
• Repair the labrum (cartilage along the edge of the hip socket)
• Reshape the ball of the hip joint so that it can move smoothly in the joint socket

Whenever possible, our surgeons use minimally invasive hip arthroscopy, which uses smaller incisions for less pain and a faster recovery. Some procedures may require an open-surgery approach.