The largest ball and socket joint in the body, the hip joint, goes through seven million movement cycles per year in the average person so it is perhaps unsurprising that tens of thousands of people are affected by hip or groin pain. What is surprising is that hip pain doesn’t just affect older people and when it does affect younger people it is often left untreated or incorrectly diagnosed. Today, around 6.82 million people play sport three times a week which can put extra strain on hip joints. This is just one of the reasons that countless individuals under the age of 50 are affected by hip pain, a condition that affects anyone, from athletes and gym-goers to footballers in a Sunday league team to weekend gardeners and mum’s lifting children at home.

While some hip pain goes away with rest, physiotherapy and painkillers, other hip pain is more persistent and can mean that affected individuals, as young as 18, have to give up running, playing football, tennis or golf. Now a form of keyhole surgery called hip arthroscopy is available which is less invasive than traditional open hip surgery and is often performed as a day-case and may require a shorter stay in hospital compared to traditional open hip surgery. Importantly, some common hip problems if left untreated may result in osteoarthritis, a condition that affects more than 650,000 people in the UK, but early treatment with hip arthroscopy may prevent or slow down the advance of this painful disease.