The Ohio State Wexner Medical Center is using a new procedure to help patients avoid hip replacement surgery while still repairing their hip.

The procedure, called Subchondroplasty, involves injected a bone substitute material into the hip joint. The material helps fill voids or lesions in the joint.

“We want to preserve the native hip whenever possible because once you have a hip replacement, there’s no going back,” Dr. Kelton Vasileff, an orthopaedic surgeon at The Ohio State Wexner Medical Center, said in a press release. “We’re able to use a bone-hardening procedure that’s traditionally been used in knee surgery to help repair a patient’s own hip joint.”

Vasileff uses the procedure with other treatments as well to avoid replacement surgeries.

“In the past, a replacement would be the only long-term option for a lot of patients, but Subchondroplasty allows me to add support to the bone, making more damage-reversing surgeries possible,” Vasileff said.

After the material is injected, the patient’s body is able to replace the bone-hardening material with its own bone. Since the procedure is less invasive than total hip replacement surgery, patients are able to get back on their feet a lot sooner.