Has anyone dealt with a torn hip labrum? I discovered early last year that I have tearing of my anterior superior acetabular labrum. They checked the right hip but it is likely in both as I have the same pain on both sides. I went in to have my knee looked at (torn meniscus). At the time, I didn’t worry too much about the labrum as it only occasionally hurt during specific yoga poses and not running or riding. Now I regularly feel like I have a strained groin.
A couple questions for those that have had a similar injury:
Did it feel like a strained groin for you?
Were you able to remedy with rest, PT, etc?
Did a change in bike fit help?
Any experience with surgical repair? Recovery?
I’m a 32 year old male and feel like all of a sudden I’m becoming much too good of friends with my ortho (~4 injuries in 2 years) when I previously went 30 years with only a couple visits. Thanks for the input.
I had my labrum repaired (along with femoral head reshaping) on my right (dominant) side this past May and I’m stilling dealing my original symptoms, but to a somewhat lesser degree. In my case, there’s something else (currently undiagnosed) going on and labral repair surgery did not resolve it.
A couple questions for those that have had a similar injury:
Did it feel like a strained groin for you? - No. It felt like (and still feels like post surgery) like a strained medial glute where it attaches to the top of the hip in the back. Very localized pain. Almost like sciatica, but without the issues further down the leg (no numbness/pain anywhere else). Walking (and running) were my main triggers, but could also be in pain for several hours after biking. Mowing the hard would put me in pain for a day or two and have me limping.
Were you able to remedy with rest, PT, etc? My first trip to PT generally aggravated the issue (which consisted of mainly stretching of everything in the kinetic chain from calves to back). The only thing that really helped was a cortisone shot (but that’s a very short term solution). I took ~3 months off from running and biking with no real improvement from rest. Post surgery, the last month or so of PT was mostly focused on trying to resolve my initial issues, but I had minimal change in symptoms during that time.
Did a change in bike fit help? Post surgery I have made some changes to bike fit (shorter cranks, raised cockpit, increased saddle tilt) that have seemed to help. Biking no longer seems to be a trigger for prolonged pain. There are still motions where I can “feel” it, but they don’t trigger lingering issues off the bike like it did before.
Any experience with surgical repair? Recovery? The recovery for someone reasonably fit is fairly quick. I was walking some without crutches in around 1 week. Swimming with an ankle buoy once they incisions scabbed over. Started the return to running program after ~12 weeks. Formal PT twice a week starting around 4 weeks post surgery.
All that said, I know of 3 others that have been diagnosed with a torn larum and all had different treatment paths and outcomes.
One did not have the surgery. Primary complaints seemed to be compensation based (sore calves/planter fasciitis with some soreness and tightness in hip). Did some PT with minimal improvement, 10 weeks of no running (biking was never a problem). Eased back into running slowly and had one of best year of running and triathlon she’s had to date. She still complains about lingering “tightness”, but not pain. The non-surgical success story!Another had issues while running. Initial complaint was it felt like a very deep glute strain. She had surgery and is back to running with no complaints. The surgical success story!Another had surgery and still has lingering pain/pinching issues when biking, even after several fit changes. He never had issues running (ran 13 mi the day before his surgery for example). The surgical partial to non-success story?
We’re all in the 30’s/40’s if that matters. I’m beginning to formulate a theory that most of us have a damaged labrum that can be found by looking hard enough (MRI w/ contrast), but that it’s not the cause of a lot of symptoms. For me, I think it was probably damaged by the 25 years of soccer due to impacts and more extreme range of hip motion and was not the primary cause of my issues. It may have been an aggravating factor, but only time will tell.