Featuring Dr. Audrey Spielmann, MD, Radiologist

Duration: 2 minutes

The most common groin injuries that we see are hernias, and there a number of types of hernias. One is an inguinal hernia.  The other is a sport’s hernia which is actually more of a tear of the muscle attachment rather than a hernia, and here’s an example of very subtle sport’s hernia where we see this little bright line which is actually a tear in the muscle. This is an MRI of a hockey player that has sustained a groin injury.

The so-called sport’s hernia is what we’re seeing here. It is very subtle, even on MRI. We can see this little bright line, which represents a tear at the abductor insertion here on the pubic symphysis, and there is also brightness to this bone here, the pubic symphysis which can also be seen in sport’s hernias. The advantage of visualizing multiple slices on MRI is that we can follow the tear on multiple images.

Here we can see this tear which is very subtle seen only on two images, some brightness in the bone here consistent with edema. And the subtleness of the sport’s injury is best imaged with MRI, and if you have any questions about MRI for groin injuries, you can contact your family doctor, sports medicine specialist or an imaging referral center.