More and more patients are presenting with new diseases and ailments of the hip, complaints that a few years ago might have gone unnoticed or simply been underestimated.
From the early stages of gestation, in the hip as in other parts of the body, a series of events occur that lead to changes that, depending on the chronology and order in which they occur, can have repercussions on the hip later on. Therefore, specialists in traumatology should give importance to the different manifestations or symptoms that occur from birth.
Diagnostic imaging
With the development of new diagnostic imaging techniques, including some innocuous and non-invasive techniques such as ultrasound, it is possible to ensure, from a very early age, that the anatomy and congruence of the hip joint is within normal parameters, both statically and dynamically, This provides an important margin of tranquility for a long time during the patient’s childhood, adolescence or young adulthood, unless at these ages there are symptoms that are appreciated as strange, such as pain, gait disorders, lameness or postural disabilities, which should be cause for consultation with the specialist.
That is why for some years now, not only the treatment of osteoarthritis as a disease of the hip, already established with its sequelae, even in young patients, but also the early diagnosis of possible alterations of the hip in young adults, which can be treated and thus try to prevent them from reaching osteoarthritis, has become increasingly important. Osteoarthritis does not always respond to conservative medical treatments, it is then when it can only be replaced in the operating room by a hip prosthesis that in the elderly patient seems a wise solution but in the young adult is difficult to accept.
Treatment by arthroscopy
The diversity of diagnostic imaging tests, some available even in 3D and little or non-invasive, from Rx, ultrasound, CT, MRI, and combinations with minimally invasive procedures such as Arthro MRI, Arthro CT allow a very precise way to visualize and plan, thus, the most appropriate surgical technique that leads the specialist to its correction.
Likewise, arthroscopic treatment modalities and other techniques in the hip joint allow to see and correct a large number of pathologies in a minimally invasive way with a satisfactory short and long term recovery.
For this reason, specialists have the responsibility to direct their training in two clear directions, diagnostic and treatment. The first one towards a thorough exploration and a better realization and interpretation of new diagnostic images and the second one, in the deepening and refinement of new surgical techniques that allow access to these pathologies of young hips that, although they have always existed, can now be intervened.