Matt LaPrade: Raising Awareness of FAI

Steadman-Hawkins Research Foundation News, Summer, 2009

By Jim Brown, Executive Editor

Question: What do the following athletes have in common: Alex Rodriguez, Greg Norman, Nancy Kwan, Mario Lemieux, Kurt Warner, and Matt LaPrade?

Answer: They all had a relatively unknown condition called femoroacetabular impingement (FAI), they were all successfully treated by Dr. Marc Philippon, one of the famed orthopaedic surgeons at Steadman-Hawkins, and they all returned, or will return, to very high levels of competition in their respective sports.

Matt LaPrade is a two-sport honor student who will return to his hockey team this fall at Holy Catholic High School in Victoria, Minnesota, near the Minneapolis-St. Paul Metro Area. He was an All-Conference goalie during his freshman and sophomore seasons. Matt may not be as well-known — yet — as the Hall of Fame athletes mentioned above, but his case will be important in raising national awareness of FAI among young athletes. Here is his story.

More Than Just a Groin Injury
“My hips started hurting early in the 2008-2009 season,” he explains. “I thought I had just tweaked a groin muscle. It was sore at first, then the pain gradually increased. Both sides hurt, but the pain was worse on the right side. By the end of the season, I felt it almost all the time — sitting, walking, getting down into the butterfly position, whatever.”

[Editor’s Note: The butterfly technique is a style of play used by goalies in hockey. Butterfly goalies play with their feet apart and knees bent. On low shots they drop to their knees and spread their legs to cover the bottom of the net. Don’t try this at home.]

Matt had hip pain four years earlier, but x-rays did not reveal FAI. Once the 2009 season was over, he had another set of x-rays in taken Minneapolis and they showed FAI in both hip joints. The x-rays illustrate that FAI is a developmental condition. It doesn’t exist at birth, but it can develop during the years when a person’s bones are still growing.

Professional Advice at Home
Matt’s mother, Sandy, was a critical care nurse and is now a fulltime mother of three boys. Chris, 18, just graduated from high school and will attend the University of Minnesota. Jeff , another goalie in the LaPrade family, is 14. Matt’s father is Robert LaPrade, M.D., Ph.D., a nationally prominent knee and shoulder surgeon at the University of Minnesota.

The LaPrades decided that Matt’s treatment should be done in Vail. Matt says he didn’t know about Steadman-Hawkins or Dr. Philippon, but his parents did. “We knew that Steadman-Hawkins is the best orthopaedic clinic in the country and that Dr. Philippon is the best hip specialist in the world,” explains Sandy. The treatment Matt would receive is an orthroscopic procedure to correct excessive bone growth at the hip socket that characterizes FAI. It has been developed and validated by Dr. Philippon and his colleagues through research conducted at the Foundation.

First Impressions
“My first impression of Steadman-Hawkins was good,” remembers Matt. “Everything felt comfortable. The placed was packed, but everyone looked happy, and walking down those hallways and seeing the jerseys of all of those famous athletes who had been treated there made me feel good. I knew that this was not going to be career-ending surgery.”

Within hours after the first surgery, Matt was already doing rehab exercises. He stayed in Vail for a week in order to participate in specialized hip therapy at Howard Head Sports Medicine in the Vail Valley Medical Center. Four weeks later he was back in Vail for surgery on the other hip.

“Dr. Philippon is probably one of the few hip surgeons in the world so familiar with the FAI condition that he knew a 16-year-old’s body would be able to recover quickly,” says Sandy. “That’s why we were able to have the second procedure done so soon after the first.”

Update
How does Matt feel today? “Really good,” he says. “I started skating yesterday (six weeks after the second surgery). No pain, a little tightness in the left hip, but it gets better every day.”
What about the Steadman-Hawkins experience? “It’s the best possible care you could get,” answers Sandy. “State-of-the-art everything. It’s like nothing I had ever seen. The atmosphere is upbeat, everyone works together, and you know the decisions they make are backed by research.”

Matt has a word for other young athletes who might have hip pain or even FAI. “If the pain doesn’t go away pretty quickly, see a doctor. Even if it happens after a season has started, do something about it sooner rather than later. That way, you’ll be able to go all out the next year.”

The Big Picture
Dr. Philippon, not surprisingly, sees the big picture. “Matt has a great future ahead of him. We were able to intervene early and treat his injury. The procedure gives him a healthier joint and a chance to continue playing his favorite sport at a high level without worrying about his hip as a limiting factor.”
Matt LaPrade didn’t choose to be injured or to need surgery. But, to our knowledge, he the only hockey player in the world to have successful FAI surgery on both hips at the young age of 16. By going through this process early in life, he has raised the awareness of a potentially career-ending condition and injury, and his story might encourage others to seek medical attention early rather than waiting and hoping that their hip pain will go away. That’s enough to put Matt in our FAI Hall of Fame.
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