Hip surgery at Atlanta Sports Medicine Institute is a family of operations with one aim in common: keeping the joint you already have, and correcting whatever is wearing it out. Most of them are done through a few small openings, some working inside the ball and socket and some in the tendon and bursa at the side of the hip. Which one fits you follows from what is damaged, not from how loudly the hip complains.
Two of them carry enough detail to hold pages of their own: the torn cartilage rim with the impingement behind it, and the arthroscopic technique the majority of this work is done through. What follows is the map across the whole family instead: what it covers, how the decision to operate is reached, and what the months afterward ask of you whichever operation you have. The complete list by formal name is on the Surgery Menu.
Condition overviews, treatment options, surgical animations and surgical videos from the OrthoPedia patient education library, organized by hip condition. Choose a condition, then pick a video.
Hip operations divide on a line that is invisible from the outside, and it decides nearly everything about the operation: whether the problem sits inside the ball and socket or in the soft tissue wrapped around it.
The ball, the socket, the ring of cartilage around the socket rim and the smooth surface cartilage on both bones all sit inside a sealed capsule. Reaching them means opening a working space in that capsule and holding the leg so the joint gives a little, which is what an arthroscopic hip operation involves.
The tendon that holds your pelvis level and the fluid-filled sac under the band of tissue running down the thigh sit above the capsule, at the side of the hip. A camera reaches them through small openings too, but nothing enters the joint, which is why these are called endoscopic rather than arthroscopic.
A few problems are past what a camera can reach. A socket too shallow to cover the ball needs bone repositioned, and a large area of missing surface cartilage needs room to work in. Open is not a lesser operation here; it is the one those problems require.
A single hip can need work on both sides of that line in one sitting, and the surgeon plans for it before you go to sleep rather than discovering it halfway.
It is also why two people whose hips hurt can be told two completely different stories about what surgery would involve. The first job of the visit is working out which side of that line you are on, and where it hurts, what the exam reproduces and what the imaging shows are what settle it together.
An operation is not what happens after a diagnosis. It is what happens after a nonsurgical program has had a real run and the hip is still limiting you, which is the order every hip here goes in.
That program is the same one whatever the diagnosis turns out to be, and the hip arthroscopy page sets out what it involves. What matters at this level is what it proves. A hip that quiets down under changed loading, targeted strengthening and time has answered the question: it did not need an operation, and only time in treatment could have shown that. A hip that keeps catching, keeps swelling, keeps giving way, or keeps you off the thing you actually want to do has answered it the other way.
Imaging enters at that point rather than ahead of it. An x-ray reads the shape of the bones and the room left between them; an MRI is what shows a torn rim or a worn patch of surface cartilage. Neither one books an operation by itself. A finding that matches what the exam reproduces is a reason to operate. The same finding in a hip that feels fine is a picture, not a problem, and plenty of people carry one without knowing.
The last part of the decision is a conversation rather than a scan. Before a date is set you should have heard what the operation is meant to correct, what it will not correct, how long the leg will be protected afterward, how long rehabilitation runs, and what the plan is if the hip does not settle. That is the discussion worth having in full, and it is the one this page exists to get you ready for.
The name of the operation follows from the problem, and most hips arrive with one of these.
The pairing most hip preservation operations are done for. Extra bone on the socket rim, on the neck of the thigh bone, or both, collides where the two should glide, and the ring of cartilage caught between them wears through. The shape is corrected and the rim anchored back in the same operation. That whole subject belongs to the hip labral tear page.
Surface cartilage has almost no blood supply and heals poorly on its own. A defect in one place can be smoothed back to a stable edge, the bone beneath it drilled so healing cells can reach it, or the gap filled with a plug of bone and cartilage or with transplanted cartilage. Damage spread across the whole joint is a different situation and is not what these procedures are for.
The gluteus medius keeps your pelvis level when you stand on one leg, and a tear in its tendon shows up as pain over the outside of the hip with weakness lifting the leg out to the side. The repair tacks the tendon back down to the thigh bone with anchors and sutures, endoscopically or open, after months of strengthening have failed to settle it.
When the tight band running down the outside of the thigh keeps irritating the sac beneath it, the band can be released to take the tension off and the inflamed sac removed. Both are done through small openings with a camera, and both come a long way down the list.
When the bone inside the ball starts to die back, the aim is to act while the ball still holds its round shape, because the options narrow sharply once it flattens. Staging on imaging is what separates those two situations, and it is why this one is followed rather than watched.
Two hips with the same finding on an MRI can need different operations, because the decision also weighs what the rest of the joint looks like, what you need the hip to do and how long the trouble has been running. Several of these are shown being performed in the Video Vault on this page, and where an injection rather than an operation is the right next step, regenerative medicine covers what goes in the syringe.
Recovery after a hip operation is not one timetable, and this page will not hand you one. What was done inside decides it, and the protocol your surgeon writes for your hip is the only version that applies. What is common across the family is the shape of the demand.
Most of what people actually want to know lands outside the joint: the stairs at home, how much sooner a desk job returns than a job on your feet, when you can drive again. Those answers come from your own restrictions and from the person who set them, which is another reason the conversation before the operation is worth having in full.
Nearly every operation here limits how much weight goes through the leg while something heals onto bone. The limit protects the repair, not your comfort, and it is not adjustable from how the hip happens to feel that morning.
A brace that stops the extremes of hip movement protects a repair and a capsule that was closed with sutures. It comes off when the person who put it on says so.
Hip rehabilitation begins before the hip is strong, because motion is far easier to keep than to win back, and it carries on well past the point where walking looks normal to anyone watching. It is the longer half of the job.
Impact and pivoting come last, when the hip can take them. The hip arthroscopy page sets the phases out in order for the operation most of this work is done through.
Soreness that eases over days is ordinary. Pain that climbs after it had been falling, a wound that reddens or drains, a fever, or new swelling in one calf is not something to wait out.
The standard applied here is quick to state and slow to apply: operate when the damage will not settle on its own, when it is costing you something that matters, and when acting now leaves more of the joint intact than waiting would. Everything else follows from that, including the decision not to operate, which is where most hips end up.
It is also why the surgical conversation starts from what the hip cannot do rather than from what the report says. Hip pain is worked up in a set order here, and an operation only ever enters at the end of it. Where surgery is indicated, the thinking inside the joint is joint preservation: correct the shape that caused the trouble, keep what can be kept, and leave the hip better able to look after itself.
Two of the credentials on record sit behind that judgment. Repeatedly selected by peers since 2006 to teach shoulder, hip, and knee surgery at national and international courses. Completed advanced fellowship training in Sports Medicine and Arthroscopy.
People reach this page at very different points. Some are working out whether an operation is even a question for them; others already have a date and want to understand where their operation sits in the family. Both start the same way, and if you are somewhere on that spread in Atlanta, request an appointment and we will begin from what the hip can and cannot do today.
If pain is limiting the way you train, work, sleep, or move, an evaluation can turn uncertainty into a practical next-step plan.
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Atlanta Sports Medicine Institute helps active patients understand what may be driving their symptoms and compare appropriate treatment paths. The experience should be precise, understandable, and tied to the activities each patient wants to return to.
Most of it, and not all of it. Work inside the ball and socket is reached with a camera through a few small openings, and that covers the majority of what this practice operates on. The tendon and bursa problems at the side of the hip are reached the same way but never enter the joint, which is why they are called endoscopic instead. A few problems still need an open incision: a socket too shallow to cover the ball has to have bone repositioned, and a cartilage defect past a certain size needs room to work in. The approach follows the diagnosis rather than the other way around.
No. Everything on this page is preservation surgery, which means the joint you have is kept and the thing that is damaging it is corrected. A replacement is a different operation for a different stage: it removes the worn surfaces instead of repairing them, and it becomes the sensible option once there is little left to preserve. Which conversation you are in depends on the state of the cartilage and the shape of the bone, and imaging plus an exam is what settles that.
It changes almost everything about it. Pain in the groin and the front of the hip usually points inside the joint. Pain over the bony point at the side, worse lying on that side and worse on stairs, usually points at the tendon that keeps your pelvis level or the fluid-filled sac beneath the band of tissue running down the thigh. Those are outside the capsule, so an operation there does not enter the joint at all, and the great majority of them settle without one. Strengthening the muscles at the side of the hip is the treatment that actually changes the mechanics, and it is the step most often skipped.
Five things, and none of them are answered by a scan. What is the operation meant to correct. What it will not correct. How long you will be off the leg afterward. How long the rehabilitation runs. And what the plan is if the hip does not settle. A surgeon should be able to answer all five about your hip specifically, using your imaging and your exam. If the answers are general, the decision is not ready yet.
Tell us what is bothering you and we will get you in front of the right person.
