Hip Labral Tear surgeon in the Boston area?

If people including and especially orthopaedic surgeons read the research around labral tears a lot less surgeries would be done.

For instance most people have labral tears and of these most never have any symptoms or loss of function.

It is lazy medicine to do an MRI on someone with hip pain, find a labral tear and assume this is the cause of the problem and needs fixing.

I'm pretty sure I have a hip labral tear or something with similar symptoms. Is there a website with exercises to help fix the problems. Also, what type of sports doctor could I see that could help steer me in the right direction so I can start running as much as I used to without recurring hip pain?

Did you end up going with Dr. Martin? I have a surgery scheduled with him for November. Labral repair, and also FAI. I also found his 'non-PT' approach strange, but it's hard to dispute since he's one of the top in his fields. I feel like if I were to go get a 2nd opinion, they would say the opposite of that, then I'm in the position of needing a tie breaker :)

When I was 15 I had a labral repair done by Dr. Mininder Kocher. He's very good, however from my knowledge, he works with peds. I'm not 100% sure on that. Would recommend, although my repair lasted only about 7 years before I started having issues. As a dancer and runner, the surgery was worthwhile because I could perform without pain. However I am now looking at another possible repair or replacement via Dr. Scott Martin. A repairative surgery like this isn't a permanent solution if you are continuously active, from my experience. It was also a decent chunk of recovery time. If you can avoid surgery and have success with injections, I would recommend that. Unfortunately I never had success with them.

I just had an appointment with Dr. Martin and I am surprised, after reading in multiple posts in this thread that he doesn't believe in PT, PT is what he is offering to me preceded by a lidocaine-corticosteroid diagnostic injection.

Background story: all troubles started after a very bad car accident. L4/L5 are dessicated and I have a lower back pain, too, that radiates down my left leg.

Prior to an appointment with Dr. Martin, I had 2 years of PT, yoga (which I actually believe aggravated it) occasional running/power walking.. Occasional, because of a substantial amount of pain.

MRI shows anterior labral tear with extension.

I can't stand for a long time, it hurts to walk. I am 38 and all Dr. Martin is offering is more PT...

From what he was telling me it was clear he is in the midst of more studies and he mentioned "groups" he does injections and PT and if that doesn't help, he transfers them to "surgery group".

I keep hearing he is the best, but frankly I would hate to be another statistics for his research.

More PT, more pain, more time wasted?!

Please, advise, based on your experience.

all the best man

Was able to return to 100% of my pre injury running. 80-90 miles per week. Martin is incredible

I've heard he is leaving the Brigham to go to MGH so be on the lookout.

What happened with your injections and more pt? I've been placed in the same group after over a year of PT and the pain just keeps getting worse! I'm curious to see if his approach will help or is it just for his statistics?!

Absolutely go with the better doctor even if you have to wait longer. Unless there are two with very good reputations go with the more experienced one. I have coached athletes that had it done by a less reputable surgeon and they were still having reoccurring problems years after the surgery.

I also recommend someone who specializes in hip arthroscopy over just hip surgery in general. Arthroscopy is the way to go as it is less invasive.

I dealt with hip pain and inability to do much physical activity at all without pain for two years which progressively got worse even with PT (PT honestly may have made the tear worse) before finally getting an MRI to confirm a tear and scheduling surgery. The tear was caused by bone calcification making the acetabulum irregularly shaped causing the labrum to rub on it when my hips were weak which caused the tear. If it's torn, it will only get worse and not better until you get it surgically repaired.

I went to Chris Larson with Twin Cities Orthopedics in the Twin Cities area of Minnesota. He is known as one of the best hip arthroscopic surgeons in the world and has done this same surgery on several of my friends who are professional or semi-elite runners with much success. I also know there is a nationally known surgeon for this in the Pittsburgh area, but I don't know his name.

Research by Dr. Larson has found there to be more full recoveries much of the time if you do an adductor release with the labrum repair if you are having groin pain which occurs due to compensation if you go to long without repairing the labrum.

I personally had a labrum repair where they also shaved down the bone on the accetabulum and did the adductor release. Not gonna lie, the recovery from this sucks and the adductor release makes the recovery longer. I second the person who said if you slack at all on your rehab you will regret it. Personally, the recovery from this has not gone well for me at all. I was told 6 months until full recovery where I could do participate fully in any sport or running again. I moved to a small rural town 3 months after having this surgery which was probably a bad move b/c the PT in the small town was less experienced with this rehab than the one in the Twin Cities that see's hundreds of patients recovering from this per year. I made some progress there with some pain and weakness remaining in that hip/adductor all year before I was forced to move home again for the summer which created another gap in PT before moving to another state for this school year where I finally am getting good treatment again and finally making some progress two years later. This moving probably hurt my recovery the most. It is absolutely essential that you make sure there is a PT near where you plan to recovery that is experienced in this rehab with good success rates. Two years after surgery, I am just now getting up to about 3 miles of continuous running 2-3 days per week and still have some off and on hip and adductor pain from exercising or too much sitting, standing, or walking. Often, I will be limping after PT b/c my hip is still very weak. My biggest problem right now is that I have almost no adductor strength on the leg that had the release so the lack of that muscle activating is putting my stress on my bad hip when I walk or try to do rehab or exercise. My other hip has some of the same symptoms as the bad hip before surgery, so sometimes when I wonder if this was worth it and that one hurts too, I realize that the pain in the non-surgical hip is worse than the weakness pain the one that had the surgery (and used to have the pain the other one now has.) So yeah, kinda long answer here, but my personal experience with this surgery has not been great probably more due to lack on consistently good PT in the 6 mths after surgery, but I am hopeful this will eventually heal and make it worth it. My friends that had this and stayed in the Twin Cities for PT had much faster and more successful recoveries than I did. One of them placed in the steeple at the Olympic trials about 9 months after the surgery, so you can have a quick comeback from this if things go well.

Hi - I just received an MRI that shows I have a partial tear and a separation of the labrum however not FAI. I am trying to get a grip on the lead times between MRI and surgery. Currently have appointment with my orthopedic specialist next week at beth Israel ... any recommendations for speeding up the time to surgery. I started seeing a chiropractor for this in March and it’s just now almost end of October:.. it has been a very long frustrating road to even get an MRI so now that it has been confirmed I really want to get this done.. it has had a negative effect on my whole life .. work/ home everything... I can’t stand sitting for long and now tend to work from home a lot more ...

Any advice would be welcome!!

Hi. I know your post is really old and maybe you won’t see this but my din (23) has gone through years of pain and PT trying to rehab hip labrum tear and avoid surgery. We are finally acknowledging surgery is the option if he ever wants to get back in the basketball court. Now that a number of years have passed how was the recovery and outcome of your labrum surgery? We are seeing someone at children’s hospital and MGH. thank you.