My 78-year old father took a misstep off a ladder and hurt his hip. It wasn’t broken or dislocated, but he tore a ligament inside the hip 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 surgeon a chance to see inside the joint. Unusual damage can be found and repaired this way.

He found 41 cases of ligamentum teres injury in about 15 percent of the 271 patients he examined.