A perspective on femoroacetabular impingement

Excerpt

Although Smith-Petersen described impingement of the native hip in 1936 [1], the success of replacement arthroplasty of the hip dominated the orthopaedic literature until the early contemporary reports of femoroacetabular impingement (FAI) at the turn of the millennium [2]. Subsequently, an exponential increase in interest in the subject has occurred, as demonstrated by the annual number of Pubmed hits for FAI, which reached 168 in 2010 alone. This interest is perhaps not surprising when one considers that FAI represents a new diagnosis for young adults with hip pain, an opportunity for advanced imaging and surgical techniques, and perhaps most tantalisingly, the possibility of altering the natural history of degenerative joint disease and limiting progression to end-stage osteoarthritis (OA). With the explosion of recent interest in FAI, there are many controversies and unresolved issues that will be the targets for research over the next decade. …