Can a Hip Labral Tear Resolve on Its Own With Rest and Physical Therapy?

You’ve been gimping thanks to a hip labral tear that’s causing no small amount of discomfort, and you want to know what the road looks like moving forward. More specifically, is this one of those joint issues that benefits from rest, patience, and a good amount of physical therapy (PT)?

The short answer is typically, “No” — hip labral tears do not readily heal on their own and often require intervention to repair the damage.

While this may not be what you want to hear, the good news is that you’re in the right place if you're dealing with a hip labral tear. At Western Orthopaedics, we’re pleased to have one of the leading hip preservation experts on our team — Dr. Brian White — who has an enormous amount of experience repairing hip labral tears.

In the following, we dive into hip labral tears and why intervention is effective if you want this tissue to function normally again.

Behind your hip labral tear

Your hips are large ball-and-socket joints. The top of your femur (thighbone) fits into a socket called the acetabulum in your hip bone. Sealing the socket and keeping the femoral head in place is a ring of tough tissue called the labrum.

There are many ways this labral tissue can tear or fray, such as due to:

• An acute injury to your hip
• Repetitive use
• General wear and tear
• Anatomical issues, such as femoroacetabular impingement

Osteoarthritis, which affects 32.5 million American adults, can also lead to soft tissue damage like hip labral tears.

Common symptoms of a hip labral tear

No matter what damaged the labrum in your hip, you can be left with:

• Hip pain, especially when you make certain movements, like bending over
• A dull ache in your hip
• Catching in the joint
• Hip instability
• Stiffness in your hip

When you have a labral tear, the seal around your hip socket is broken, which allows synovial fluid to leak out, leaving the bones inside the joint unprotected. Many of the symptoms we describe above, such as the pain, are because of this loss of lubricant. Making matters worse, because the joint is no longer cushioned by synovial fluid, damage inside the joint can increase over time.

Solutions for your hip labral tear

Now let’s get to the heart of our discussion as to whether rest and PT can help heal a hip labral tear. While these two can play an important role in addressing the tear, they aren’t usually effective on their own to resolve the problem. The bottom line is that a labral tear won’t knit back together on its own, no matter how much time and rest you give it.

That said, surgery isn’t always the answer either. If we determine that your labral tear isn’t large and it’s not interfering with your ability to get around, then we rely on conservative treatments like rest, over-the-counter medications, and physical therapy.

If, however, the tear is significant and you’re in a good deal of pain and having difficulty moving around, having Dr. White surgically repair the tissue may make better sense. 

Dr. White has extensive experience with these hip preservation procedures, and he uses the most advanced and minimally invasive surgical techniques available. In fact, he often performs a hip labral tear as an outpatient procedure, which means you can go home the same day.

Of course, after your surgery, rest and PT will play big roles in getting you up and moving again.

If you’d like to figure out which approach is best for your hip labral tear, we invite you to contact one of our offices in Arvada or Denver, Colorado, to set up a consultation with Dr. White.