No stranger to bumps and bruises or an occasional muscle ache, 10-year-old Jordan Magaña seemed unstoppable. He would bike to school, practice martial arts and even do tricks on a pogo stick. But when his left hip started hurting before bed, his mother, Julia Magaña, feared there was a problem.  

Magaña, an emergency medicine physician at UC Davis Medical Center, recalled asking him what made the pain more severe.

“It was worse walking up the stairs and he didn’t have any trauma history,” Magaña said. “I watched him walk and noticed he was swinging out his leg a bit. I worried there was something more going on.”

Magaña suspected he had a condition called slipped capital femoral epiphysis, or SCFE, the most common hip disorder in adolescents. SCFE occurs when the ball at the top of the thighbone (femur) slips backward off the neck of the bone through the growth plate. SCFE causes hip, groin, or knee pain and a limp — exactly like Jordan’s hip pain. But the disorder typically occurs in kids older than 10. Wasn’t it too early?