The Mayo Table Technique in Hip Arthroscopy

Hip distractor devices or hip fracture tables (HFTs) are vital to perform a reliable hip arthroscopy (HA) for the treatment of femoroacetabular impingement, especially when labral tears, chondral-labral delaminations, ligamentum teres tears, and other intraarticular disorders are present. Adequate hip distractors were not available in the early days of HA; most of HFTs being used those days were rigid, cumbersome, and did not allow us to properly perform an arthroscopic dynamic impingement test to evaluate and assess the femoral head and its site of impingement. The mayo table technique was developed because of the lack of appropriate hip instrumentation and an HFT when the author (A.P.S.) started to perform HA. This easy technique allows the surgeon to control hip maximal range of motion and also to assess completely the cam deformity in the posterolateral, superolateral, anterior, and anteroinferior aspects. It also allows the surgeon to revise where the cam is impinging and afterward perform a complete bony resection and decompression. We strongly believe that with the mayo table technique HA can be performed simply and reliably in old rigid and cumbersome HFTs and also hip distractors that do not allow an adequate dynamic assessment of the hip with maximal range of motion.