Aidan: From Hip Pain to Healing

Aidan is a soccer superstar. Ever since Aidan was a little boy, he loved to be on the field smashing goals and winning with his teammates. But at 16, he noticed something wasn’t feeling quite right in his leg. What seemed like a hamstring injury became increasingly painful and prevented Aidan from playing, which led him to a more complicated diagnosis.

A hip impingement diagnosis

Our physical therapists tried several techniques over multiple weeks to help Aidan, but his pain wasn’t going away. This suggested a more serious issue. While receiving care at Therapy Care on Telstar, Colorado Springs, sports medicine doctor Gregory Walker, MD, performed an intraarticular injection — a diagnostic tool that injects medication into the hip joint to identify whether the pain is coming from the joint or another place in the hip area. The injection confirmed the pain was likely coming from inside Aidan’s hip joint.

After the shot, an MRI showed that Aidan had an overgrown bone in his hip that was causing impingement and a labral tear. Hip impingement, also known as femoroacetabular impingement, happens when the hip joint rubs against the socket, causing pain and damage to the surrounding tissue such as the labrum. In Aidian’s case, whether it was a predisposition or activity that caused the hip impingement, extensive physical therapy alone wasn’t getting him back on the field.

“I sat down and had a conversation with my coach,” Aidan says. “A lot of kids might have given in at this point and victimize themselves of their injury, but I couldn’t be that person.”

Can hip arthroscopy surgery conquer the pain?

Surgery was the next option. Aidan met with orthopedic surgeon Curtis VandenBerg, MD, who suggested hip arthroscopic surgery — a procedure that uses smaller incisions than typical hip surgery and cameras to fix the labrum and shave down the bone to help with the impingement.

“We left it up to Aidan and when he said, ‘let's do the surgery’ we just felt like he was well cared for and as a parent, felt like it was the right decision to move forward,” says Aidan’s dad, Scott. “Bottom line, Children’s Colorado made us feel confident throughout the process.”

Using special software and a CT scan, Dr. VandenBerg created a 3-D map and animation of Aidan’s hip for his surgery. This gives Dr. VandenBerg and his team in our Hip Preservation Program a detailed roadmap to follow during surgery.

“Our multidisciplinary team has developed a thoughtful multidisciplinary approach to identify the root cause of the problem and address each patient individually, often with conservative treatments, and when necessary, surgical procedures which in many cases can be done using minimally invasive arthroscopic techniques,” Dr. VandenBerg says.

Getting back on the field after hip impingement surgery

After a successful surgery, Aidan was prescribed a hip brace, crutches and continued physical therapy. Just two months later and once cleared to play, he was back on the field getting back in shape. Aidan was invited to play for the Colorado Springs Switchbacks First professional academy team, and after a couple months, was offered an amateur professional contract. While Aidan was still working through his recovery, he made many home appearances on the bench and even traveled to Orange County with the team.

“Even though I never got minutes, I think overcoming the surgery and many months later being told I’ll be competing in a professional environment was an amazing opportunity,” Aidan says.

But his opportunities weren’t close from done and Aidan was welcomed to play for the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (UCCS) after high school graduation.

In addition to physically improving and getting back to performing at his level, Aidan stresses putting equal effort into his recovery both physically and mentally to regain his confidence on the field. Aidan found it helpful to join a support group to work through what he was feeling and to process his medical journey. His family, coaches and teammates continue to be some of his biggest cheerleaders and support.

“Mentally, it’s important to reach out to other people because doing it alone is impossible,” says Aidan. “The support group is most important to healing.”

As Aidan prepares to start his college soccer career in the fall he thanks the physical therapists, sports medicine doctors and the rest of his team at Children’s Colorado for getting him ready for the next step.

“My advice is to trust your provider, because at the end of the day, they’ve done all the research and that was the biggest thing — I trusted people to do it,” says Aidan. “I honestly wouldn’t be here without the resources that Children’s Colorado provides.”