Fractures, complex injuries, developmental conditions, or degenerative conditions like arthritis can cause damage to the bones, ligaments, and other tissues in your hip joint, often causing pain and making your movements difficult. Fortunately, you don’t have to live with pain since many treatment options are available for joint pain, such as surgical and nonsurgical.
Surgical treatment options to alleviate your hip pain include hip joint reconstruction and replacement surgery. Most people think that both hip reconstruction and replacement are the same. However, that’s not true.
Let’s discuss what hip reconstruction and replacement surgeries are and where you can go in Greater Cleveland and Westlake, OH, for your hip surgery.
Hip Reconstruction Surgery
As the name indicates, hip reconstruction surgery is a surgical procedure that allows your doctor to rebuild (reconstruct) your damaged joint while preserving much of your natural bone and tissues. These are mostly performed on younger patients for which hip replacement surgery is unsuitable.
During a hip reconstruction surgery, a minimally invasive technique (arthroscopy) is mostly used to improve the hip joint’s function without replacing it.
Some common procedures that are performed to construct your hips include:
Labrum Reconstruction: The labrum is a ring of soft tissues that supports your hip joint. Labrum reconstruction surgery is performed to restore the function of the labrum in situations where the labrum is damaged to the point that can’t be repaired.
Capsular Reconstruction: Sometimes, following hip surgery, you experience continuous pain caused by hip capsular tissues not healing properly. In these cases, the capsular is either repaired or reconstructed to regain hip stability.
Open/closed Reduction: These procedures treat a bone fracture by holding the fractured bone pieces of your hip joint in place with pins and screws as they heal. A small incision is made during an open reduction, while the incision is not required in immediate reduction.
Bone Grafting: This procedure is used for complex fractures that are impossible to repair with open or closed reduction. In bone grafting, the damaged bone is replaced with a bone removed from other parts of the patient’s body.
Hip Replacement Surgery
Also known as hip arthroplasty, hip replacement is a common surgical procedure to treat a damaged joint that is beyond repair or reconstruction. During hip arthroplasty, an artificial hip joint (a prosthesis) is used to replace the damaged hip joint partially or totally. The prosthesis or artificial hip joint improves body movements and can be made of artificial material, such as plastic, ceramics, metal, etc.
Hip replacement can be performed by the following techniques:
Posterior Approach. As the most commonly used technique, the posterior approach involves making an incision outside the hip, close to the buttocks. Your surgeon will cut some muscles to access your hip joint while you’re lying on your side.
A Direct Anterior Approach. In this approach to performing hip replacement, you are asked to lie on your back. Your surgeon makes an incision on the front of your thigh and works around muscles to access the hip joint instead of cutting them.
A Lateral Approach. This approach is similar to the posterior approach. The only difference is that your surgeon makes an incision on the outside of your hip closer to the front of the body instead of the buttocks.
