Surgical management of chronic lower abdominal and groin pain in high-performance athletes.

Formerly, most of the causes and treatments of chronic lower abdominal and groin pain in high-performance athletes eluded sports medicine specialists. Now we are much better at identifying and managing the different syndromes. Most of the advances are based on empiric evidence, although many pitfalls remain with respect to diagnosis and management of the various syndromes. This article reviews our current understanding of several of these clinical entities. We focus on lessons learned from a large 15-year experience.