My 78-year old father took a misstep off a ladder and hurt his hip. It wasn’t broken or dislocated, but he tore the ligament holding the hipbone in the socket. How often does this type of injury occur?

More often than we ever thought before! Only a few cases have been reported from time to time over the years. Then Dr. Byrd from the Nashville Sports Medicine Center started
looking at every hip he was operating on using an arthroscope.

An arthroscope is a special tool that’s inserted into the joint. There’s a tiny TV camera on the end of the scope. It gives the doctor a chance to see inside the joint. Unusual damage can be found and repaired this way.

He found 41 cases of ligamentum teres injury (partial or full tear) in 271 patients. That’s about a 15 percent incident.