On today’s episode we’re focusing on hip preservation with Dr. Andrea Spiker. We have some great articles for you that contribute well to our conversation on femoroacetabular impingement or “FAI”, hip dysplasia and the arthroscopic and open surgical treatments for these conditions. As always, links to all of the papers that we discuss on this show can be found on our podcast website – www.thesportsdocspod.com

We’ll start off our discussion today with an article from the June 2018 issue of The Lancet titled “Hip arthroscopy versus best conservative care for the treatment of femoroacetabular impingement syndrome.” This multicenter RCT included 348 patients across 28 hospitals in the UK and compared conservative treatment with physical therapy to surgical treatment with hip arthroscopy. The authors reported that while both groups improved after treatment, patients who underwent hip arthroscopy for treatment of FAI demonstrated significantly greater improvement in hip-related quality of life compared to patients who had nonsurgical treatment.

 Then, from the September issue of AJSM this year, we review an article titled “Progression of Osteoarthritis at Long-term Follow-up in Patients Treated for Symptomatic Femoroacetabular Impingement with Hip Arthroscopy Compared with Nonsurgically Treated Patients.” Aaron Krych and team at the Mayo Clinic reported significantly less progression of arthritic changes in surgical patients compared to non-op. Seven percent of patients in the surgical group ultimately underwent a total hip replacement compared to 12% in the non-op group. Risk factors for failure of non-op treatment included male sex, presence of a CAM morphology, increased age and initial arthritic joint changes at diagnosis. 

 We are joined today by Dr. Andrea Spiker, a board-certified orthopedic surgeon at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who is dual fellowship trained in sports medicine and hip preservation. She is a team physician for UW Badger Athletics and provides head orthopedic coverage for the UW Men’s and Women’s Basketball teams. She is also the Program Director of the UW Orthopedic Surgery Sports Medicine Fellowship Program. Dr. Spiker is an active member in numerous orthopedic societies including AAOS, AOSSM and AANA, and has published extensively on the topic of hip preservation, so we’re very excited to hear all that she has to share on this topic today.