Anyone ever had a "Sports Hernia" aka: "Sportsman's hernia", "Gilmore's groin", or &quot

I've had pain in my hip flexor, left abs towards my pubic bone, and left rear buttocks for about a year. Sometimes the pain shoots down my leg, and I have noticeable pain twinges in my left ab area.

I just recently heard about SH, but I know it's unusual in females.

Any thoughts?

Female can have it for sure, though not as frequently as male I don't think it is "unusual", if you do a lot of sports the likelihood is even higher.

Get a doctor and check it out.

Update, some new adventure

Recap: I am having pain in my groin, inner thigh and sometimes balls for quite some years.

I am glad to see Dr. Meyers is on my insurance provider's list and went to my primary physician(pp) for a referral. pp think a sports hernia is a hernia and the local surgeon can do it. My local surgeon is reluctant to do surgery on me for he hasn't felt the hernia, but says that if I insist he will do it on my left side while I have pain both side. pp was saying even the elite football player here get fixed at local, I am not going to send you outside to break the insurance. He admit the result in local is mixed. An athelet thought he get better after surgery went down after 6 month.

What should I do? Is sports hernia just a hernia and whether surgeon willing to operate? What is odds one with sports hernia can get better by hernia fixing procedure?

Big dispointment!

Thanks for the help all. I had a good experience. Much more thourough than Cattey. Meyers treated me extremely well. I had all the mesh replaced with sutures and also had the other side done. He repaired my pelvic floor on the right and repaired abdominal tears previously done by Cattey on the left. I did not have the adductor release done though. I'm home now and outside of the normal discomfort I'm doing ok. Very sore, but suprisingly both sides don't hurt as bad as the one side that Cattey originally did twice. The experience was completely different than Cattey's. His professionalism is very unique. I've had 9 surgeries in my life that were all sports related and he was by far the most professional. The only negative so far was the nurses in the hospital. The night nurse was brutal. Very unprofessional. Please keep me updated on rehab as it's going to be a while before I can start.

My sports medicine/orthopedic physician thinks I have the dreaded "sports hernia" and has ordered a MRI to rule out other possibilities. If I do have to go for surgery, are there any recommendations on surgeons with a history of laproscopically repair in the Houston(Tx) area. Any other advice is sincerely appreciated.

rockitlk wrote:

What should I do? Is sports hernia just a hernia and whether surgeon willing to operate? What is odds one with sports hernia can get better by hernia fixing procedure?

Big dispointment!

A sports hernia isn't a hernia at all. Meyers warns in his literature that 'sports hernia' is a term that should not be used, because it is misleading. Athletic Pubalgia is the term of choice.

Many surgeons have tried to treat AP with traditional surgery used to fix an inguinal hernia, with poor results.

Meyers has had good success with the Pelvic Floor Repair. Every patient is different, however, and he claims to have identified 13 different variations of AP, each requiring slightly different surgical procedures.

Kozy, how far out are you from the surgery? I see Meyers this Thursday.

I'll try to avoid the night nurse if I end up having it. On Friday night I had a beer with an old friend who just served as US Ambassador to Lithuania. While there he had to have hernia surgery. He told me the nurse was some Soviet era babushka who looked like a shot putter. He swears she shaved him with a hand-held lawnmower.

I'm female and had surgery almost a year ago for AP (aka: sports hernia). Your butt/leg pain sounds like piriformis syndrome, which I also have--and had both together. If you feel pain deep in your hip (but just can't pin point it) and pain in your hip flexor/lower abs (especially when you get out of bed), then I would have it checked out. It could be AP.

that's it, i'm going to munich.

i have an appointment with dr. muschaweck at the end of february. it has been a long and oftentimes confusing process in reaching this decision, but i am confident it is the right thing to do. this confidence is based on LOTS of research on the web (this thread has been especially helpful), correspondence with people who have had surgery with dr. M in the past, and e-mail correspondence with dr. M herself.

i will post updates with my progress. it's my first surgery and needless to say i'm a bit nervous about the whole thing.

here is a pdf article that came out last year when donovan mcnabb was contemplating what to do with his sports hernia. it is one of many articles i have found about dr. M that tell me this is the right decision.

http://www.jagpt.com/docs/Could%20operation%20benefit%20McNabb.pdf

and here is the clinic's homesite in case anyone's interested:

http://www.leistenbruch.de/english/home.htm

best of luck to you all.

osaru,

Where did you get the air ticket? And how much?

If my primary physician refuse refer me to Meyers, I will have to raise money and go this route too:(

Thanks.

my flight with lufthansa is US$800. i bought it only two weeks before departure so it was probably a bit more expensive.

It is alright. I thought it would shoot up to a grand:)

I look up its website, the ticket for next month will cost at least $7xx.

Saw another local surgeon this afternoon, he is smart enough to know that sports hernia is not a hernia, but he think the fix procedure is the same: put a mesh over there. He diagnose me both side normal hernia, I told him that no one ever felt a bulge before him(at least a dozen) and raise the possibility of AP. Then he tell me they all go with a same fix, doesn't matter.

You should see the big smile on my face today. Life is so funny, I had one surgeon told me he could feel no hernia on me last month, now there is another tell me I have it both side. Is this a big joke?

I am totally confused!

If it is last year before I find this thread, I will jump in right away for the pain is so bad. Now I am more aware and don't want the old hernia repair to try on me. Sigh.

Personal feeling: if I go to see Meyers or the german doctor, they will tell me in minutes that I had AP and need surgery. There is a proverb that "A man with a hammer see everything like a nail."

Rund Daddy. doing ok. bout a week out. Just had my sutures checked and that went well. Swelling is going down. Still pretty painful, but I can walk fairly well. Little limp on my left side from more work being done on that side. My lower abdominal is pretty ugly looking, but I was told that's normal. Talked to Marcia yesterday and she said all I'm experiencing is the norm. I will talk personally by phone with Meyers on Tues. Did you have surgery? If you did, make sure you rub the suture area as much as possible. Helps with scar tissue.

kozy wrote:

Rund Daddy. doing ok. bout a week out. Just had my sutures checked and that went well. Swelling is going down. Still pretty painful, but I can walk fairly well. Little limp on my left side from more work being done on that side. My lower abdominal is pretty ugly looking, but I was told that's normal. Talked to Marcia yesterday and she said all I'm experiencing is the norm. I will talk personally by phone with Meyers on Tues. Did you have surgery? If you did, make sure you rub the suture area as much as possible. Helps with scar tissue.

Kozy, I had surgery Friday. I saw Dr. Meyers late Thursday afternoon and he diagnosed AP on my left side only. He also said I had a pretty straightforward case and would not need the adductor release. Basically, I quit running early enough that I didn't cause some of the other problems that occur with compensation.

I thought Meyers and his whole staff were great. Very professional. I was in there Friday with about 5 other athlete-patients including a former runner from Oklahoma State, an ultra runner, and a football player from Virginia Tech. My nurse told me me all the runners were handling the post op real well except the football player who was acting like a big baby. He was a big lineman - like 300lbs. Interesting.

Man am I sore right now. And I have to work this week. Meyers gave me the 6 week rehab and 3 week rehab skeds. He said let pain be my guide, but I may be able to start rehab on the 3 week sked. Honestly, the way I feel right now I can't imagine starting rehab next week. I'm 42 and not a pro athlete. What's the rush? I'm also already 15 pounds heavier than I was at the Marine Corps Marathon in October. So at this point I think I'll take my time with rehab.

Thanks for the tip on rubbing the suture area. The bandage comes off today.

rockitlk,

I don't think Meyers is going to perform surgery unless he thinks it's necessary and will help the athlete return to full form. He told me he has treated over 9,000 patients now and has performed just over 4,000 surgeries.

He has also published widely on the subject and explains why he doesn't use mesh, etc... If I understand him correctly, with AP the problem isn't so much with the abdominal wall itself as with the insertion point into the pubic bone. Mesh reinforces the abdominal wall, but it does not go to the source of the problem.

Treating AP with conventional hernia surgery has not been very effective. I don't think your doctor is correct on that point.

Good luck.

Thanks a lot.

I will try to go to see Dr. Meyers.

I read the articles Marcia send me. The medical and anatomy detail almost blow me off:) I might try to read it again and compare to my condition.

This is so important to me that I don't want to be my local surgeo's white mice, while my pain is so bad I want a quick relief!

working on getting muscle imbalances treated before the surgery will only benefit you greatly during the post op rehab. do it if you have the time.

How?

Sorry, you might have talked about detail before, it just doesn't come to my mind right away. I order the book "A Headache in the Pelvis", need to wait to March for the new edition. Might get a better understanding of the anatomical detail about pelvis after that. I tried to read all those medical articles, really confuse me:P

Thanks.