What are the manifestations of femoroacetabular impingement?

  In foreign reports, this disease occurs mostly in young and middle-aged people, but from our clinical experience, there are many typical cases in middle-aged and elderly people, most of which have not been correctly diagnosed over the years and the treatment is not targeted. The main manifestation of acetabular impingement is pain in the hip and groin area. It often has an insidious onset and can be triggered by minor trauma, with no specific cause found in many patients.  The typical site of pain is the inguinal region. The patient may experience interlocking (stuck feeling), popping and instability of the hip joint, sometimes causing the so-called “dead leg sign”, which means that the hip joint becomes more painful or interlocked when changing position (e.g., standing or turning), but returns to normal after a few moments of movement. It returns to normal after a few moments of movement.  Patients with a longer history of the disease may experience stiffness, weakness, and decreased mobility of the joint.  In the early stages, the pain is intermittent and can be exacerbated by physical work or sports activities, so it is often misdiagnosed as a hip or inguinal soft tissue disorder. The pain can also be triggered by being sedentary.  There is usually no swelling in the hip joint. Some patients may have pressure pain in the groin area or around the hip joint, and the movement of the hip joint is limited to varying degrees.  A specialist can induce pain consistent with an impingement injury by means of an impingement test, also known as an excitation test. (Specific tests are omitted here). Of course, a thorough physical examination is required to determine the origin and cause of hip pain, to properly differentiate between intra-articular and extra-articular disorders, and to exclude diseases of the abdomen, spine, sacroiliac joint, knee, etc.