Hip arthroscopy

Excerpt

Hip arthroscopy is a type of arthroscopy which has gained increased interest in the last 10–15 years. I happen to have a very long experience of it. I started early in 1974–1975. When I retired from my professorship in 1995, I had collected some 150 cases of hip arthroscopy. Interestingly the big gurus of hip arthroscopy, R.W. Villar in Cambridge, UK, J.W. Byrd in Nashville, TN, USA and M.J. Philippon in Vail, CO, USA, all have assembled more than 1,500 cases each in about 10 years time. Why so many? The reason is manifold. While I have worked almost the whole of my career in a socialised medical system, the mentioned colleagues have worked at least in a partly private system. In my country one did not earn more if one operated more—one just had to work harder. Another reason is that their indications for hip arthroscopy have been wider than those that I used. One such area is the use of hip arthroscopy for degenerative hip disease. J. Jerosch from Neuss in Germany discusses this procedure in “young” individuals with early and midstage degenerative hip disease. I am sure many of the readers will appreciate Jerosch’s definition of young, by the way. The average age of his patients was 52 years. …