The series we describe in our article
1
includes only elite hockey players, and our approach and results may not be generalizable
to other athletes or people with groin pain. We have now operated on 29 National Hockey
League players with the approach described in the article, and all have returned playing
at an elite level. In only one of these athletes was a weakened posterior wall found.
In that patient, in addition to division of the nerve and reinforcement of the external
oblique aponeurosis, the posterior wall was reinforced with sutures. On the other
hand, all of the patients in the series had tears in the external oblique aponeurosis,
with emergence of neurovascular branches through the tears, similar to what Drs Smedberg
and Roos describe in 7 of their 11 patients. Because of the ubiquity of this finding
in our own series, we believe it is important to perform a thorough search for small
tears with perforating neurovascular branches, and divide all these branches and the
ilioinguinal nerve, itself. We take this approach for all athletes we treat, and have
found that the resulting numbness in the groin is well-tolerated by the patients,
far better than the pain and disability experienced preoperatively.To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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References
- Operative treatment of “hockey groin syndrome”: 12 years experience in National Hockey League players.Surgery. 2001; 130: 759-766
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© 2002 Mosby, Inc. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
