If you’re experiencing hip pain, a doctor should evaluate it. Pain accompanied by swelling or redness indicates that the injury requires treatment.
X-rays and MRI are used to collect more information about the condition causing your hip pain. Once the correct diagnosis is made, conservative treatments are a great starting point.
Hip pain may prevent people from enjoying activities such as exercising, going out with friends, and spending time with family. Injections can relieve this pain by reducing inflammation in the hip joint and helping heal damaged soft tissues in the area.
A hip injection is a procedure performed in the doctor’s office under local anesthesia. The doctor uses a specialized type of X-ray called fluoroscopy to guide the needle into the hip joint and avoid nerve injury.
The injection consists of a corticosteroid and other medications that are time-released to help reduce inflammation. This helps the hip’s cartilage to repair itself and provides temporary relief from pain. Platelet-rich plasma (PRP) and stem cell injections are newer techniques that use your own blood to heal damaged tissue in the hip. However, these are experimental and have not been shown to predictably reduce hip arthritis symptoms or regenerate cartilage in the joint. Therefore, they cannot replace or delay the need for surgery in most cases.
Hip pain can occur from muscles/ligaments/joints not functioning properly due to injury or overuse. This can result in abnormal stress on the hip joint, causing a feeling of discomfort and limiting daily activities/sports/leisure/recreational activity. Physical Therapy can identify and correct these imbalances/abnormal stress to decrease hip pain and improve function.
The physical therapist will perform an evaluation and create a customized plan of care that will address your specific needs. This will include testing your hip’s ability to flex, straighten and rotate through a range of motion. They may also use palpation to feel the structure of your hip for any abnormalities.
Your therapist may use pain-relieving modalities in your treatment and can teach you how to incorporate these at home. Your therapist will also prescribe exercises that can help reduce hip pain. Remember to stick to your PT’s instructions and do the prescribed number, order and frequency of exercises. This will help speed your recovery and prevent re-injury.
When hip pain interferes with daily life activities or nonsurgical treatments are no longer effective, surgery may be a good option. During surgery, we take many precautions to protect you from injury and infection. We also use advanced imaging technologies, including X-rays, 3-D CT scans and MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) to visualize the joint and surrounding tissues clearly.
LifeSpan Medicine’s team of experts will correct the cause of your hip pain and provide you with a customized treatment plan. The plan may include a combination of lifestyle modifications, medications and injections to reduce inflammation and pain. Injections include steroid and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections to boost tissue regeneration and healing.
For example, we perform an Iliotibial band (ITB) release for hip bursitis in patients who don’t respond to rest and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). We can also perform a trochanteric bursectomy, a procedure that uses a motorized shaver to remove inflamed bursal tissue. Other surgical options include hip arthroscopy and core decompression to treat damaged cartilage inside the hip socket.
The most common cause of hip pain is damage to the cartilage that cushions the surface of your hip joint. Age, trauma, injuries, poor posture, and being overweight can all contribute to this degradation. This leads to a breakdown of the joint, which is extremely painful and can limit your mobility.
If your pain is severe and nonsurgical treatments don’t provide relief, our orthopedic surgeons at NYU Langone can perform hip surgery in Los Angeles & Van Nuys. They can also help you regain your mobility through physical therapy and other rehab options.
Before surgery, our hip specialist discusses your symptoms and lifestyle to identify the condition causing your hip pain. He may recommend X-rays or an MRI to collect more information about the hip and surrounding tissues. He might also suggest hip arthroscopy to examine the joint through small incisions. The doctor inserts an arthroscope into a pocket in the hip and pumps in saline solution to expand the joint for better visualization. After the procedure, he drains the saline and sutures the incisions.
