The hip is a ball-and-socket joint that supports your upper weight and facilitates the movement of your upper leg. It enables fluid movement that helps hinder friction and endure repeated motion and wear and tear. However, with age and use, the hip’s muscles and tendons can get overused, and the cartilage can wear out or get injured. For instance, the hip bones can break during a fall, leading to hip pain.

You may feel the pain inside or outside your hip joint, thighs, buttocks, or groin. Thankfully, you may get treatments, depending on the causes of the hip pains. Before diving into the various treatment options, let’s examine some causes of hip pains.

Causes Of Hip Pain

Below are some common causes of hip pain:

• Hip fractures: These are common in seniors because the bones weaken and become vulnerable to fractures as you age.   
• Arthritis: Various types of arthritis, including rheumatoid, osteoarthritis, and infectious arthritis, fail the cartilage that protects your hip bones and inflammation of the hip joint. This can lead to hip pain, difficulty walking, and tender joints.   
• Inflamed tendons: Tendonitis or inflamed tendons result from excessive exercise and causes acute hip pain.   
• Cancer: Bone tumors can cause hip pains and other areas of the body  
• Osteonecrosis: This condition occurs due to the disruption of blood flow to a particular part of a bone. It then results in the death and breaking down of bone tissue and collapsing of the joint.   
• Bursitis: Bursitis occurs when the bursa, a sac of liquid between muscles, tendons, and bone that protects these tissues against muscles, gets inflamed.    
• Hip labral tear: This is damage to the tissues that support the ball and sockets of your hips. It leads to pain, minimum movement in the hip, or the hip locking up.   

Your hip pain may be because of one or more of these conditions. Therefore, it’s essential to know the underlying cause for easy medication.   

Treatment Options  

Depending on the causes of your hip pain, your doctor can propose the following hip treatment options:  

• Surgery  

Surgery is ideal for patients with swollen or damaged hip joints that cause mobility difficulty and severe pain even when resting. It’s also suitable for people with hip fractures to consolidate and fix the bone. This requires the help of specialists to ensure the procedure is done correctly and effectively. For that reason, visit https://www.orthospecialistsofidaho.com/ or other services for the best orthopedic care. 

Some hip replacement surgery options include the following: 

• Partial Hip Replacement

In a partial hip replacement, your surgeon replaces the ball of your hip joint with an artificial part made of plastic, ceramic, or plastic. With this type of surgery, you may have one or two cuts, usually on the side or around the back of your hip. Your doctor may use anesthesia to impede pain or some drugs to make you sleep.   

• Total Hip Replacement  

This is among the most common orthopedic procedures known as total hip arthroplasty. Unlike partial hip replacement, it involves the replacement of the socket. In this surgery, your surgeon replaces damaged hip parts with artificial implants. They replace the socket with a long-lasting plastic cup.   

Moreover, they’ll replace your femoral head with a ball manufactured from a metal alloy or ceramic. Finally, they attach the new ball to a metal stem and insert it into your femur.    

• Hip Resurfacing  

This is also another popular type of hip replacement surgery that helps relieve hip pain caused by arthritis. Your surgeon will perform hip resurfacing by trimming injured bone and cartilage on your ball and socket. Afterward, they place a soft metal cap on the cut bone and a metal shell into the hip socket. These elements move together, enabling painless fluid motion.   

• Hip Arthroscopy  

This minimally invasive surgical procedure utilizes an arthroscope to examine and cure hip problems. Hip arthroscopy requires small incisions, unlike open surgery, which requires large incisions. This results in less tissue damage, lower pain, and quicker recoveries.   

During this procedure, your surgeon installs an arthroscope into your joint. Then, they use the images from the camera to perform the ideal surgery that treats hip pain.      

• Injections  

The primary purpose of the hip joint injection is to relieve pain or diagnose the underlying source of pain. It involves injecting medications directly into the hip joint. Below are some types of hip joint injections: 

• Cortisone Injection  

In this injection, your doctor will administer corticosteroids directly into your hip joint to relieve pain or reduce inflammation. Sometimes, doctors can use a high-resolution ultrasound machine to precisely target the shot in a particular area, enhancing the therapeutic results. The effectiveness of this injection varies from patient to patient and may take up to a week. However, your doctor can identify other treatment options if you still feel pain. 

• Botox Injection

Botox injections are effective when treating chronic problems, including back pain, headaches, neck pain, and hip pain. It involves using a small amount of a diluted form of botulinum toxin. Botox injections work by blocking particular nerve muscles, which regulate muscle operation. They help relax contracted muscles, and since they are administered directly to the problematic hip muscle, they help relieve pain. 

• Prolotherapy Injections Of Dextrose

Another injection that can help cure hip pain is a prolotherapy injection. Your doctor will inject a small amount of an irritant, mainly dextrose, into your body. Even though this procedure isn’t popular, it relieves pain by triggering your body to heal naturally. It alleviates tendons, muscles, ligaments, bones, or soft tissues. 

• Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) Injection  

A PRP injection is a regenerative medication that accelerates your body’s healing ability. It uses shots of concentrated platelets to increase the healing of damaged muscles, joints, tendons, and other musculoskeletal issues. 

Your doctor will prepare PRP injections by taking some tubes of your blood and passing them through a centrifuge to activate the platelets. They then inject the concentrated platelets into your injured hip. It discharges growth factors that augment the repetitive cells generated by your body. 

One advantage of this injection is that it reduces the demand for anti-inflammatories or more potent drugs. It also has limited side effects because the shots are made from your blood, so your body won’t respond negatively to or reject them. 

• Hyaluronic Acid Injection  

A healthy hip joint comprises a synovial fluid, which is a gel-like substance. This fluid consists of hyaluronic acid, which lubricates and supports hip joints during activities like walking and running. As you age, this acid can collapse, narrowing the fluid and making it less efficient as a shock absorber and lubricator. 

Hyaluronic acid injection addresses the modifications in the synovial fluid impacted by various conditions. The shot strengthens the fluid and boosts the joint’s slipping motion, which helps with hip pain relief. 

• Medications  

Your doctor can prescribe a range of medications that help reduce the pain, treat the cause of the pain, or repair damage to the hips. Some commonly used drugs for treating hip pain include the following: 

• Corticosteroids  

These drugs are like the cortisol hormone produced by the adrenal glands. They’re anti-inflammatory medications that relieve pain and reduce inflammation. If the cause of your hip pain is a systematic autoimmune disease like rheumatoid arthritis (RA), oral corticosteroids will be effective. However, if the cause is an inflamed bursa or is confined to the hip, your doctor will inject the drug directly into the bursa or inflamed joint. 

• Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs)  

NSAIDs are widely used to alleviate pain and reduce inflammation. They work like corticosteroids but don’t have the same side effects. Some NSAIDs include ibuprofen, diclofenac, celecoxib, naproxen, etc. 

• Disease-Modifying Antirheumatic Drugs (DMARDs)  

These medications are used to treat inflammatory arthritis like lupus, RA, and psoriatic arthritis. They work slowly to adjust the course of inflammation disease and improve pain, stiffness, and swelling. There are three types of DMARDs, each working slightly differently, including: 

• Conventional DMARDs: These drugs work slowly and can take weeks to be effective. Therefore, don’t stop taking them if you don’t see changes at first. Some examples of these drugs are ciclosporin, apremilast, leflunomide, sulfasalazine, etc. Your doctor may prescribe any of these drugs, but if you develop side effects or don’t respond well, your doctor can try others.  
• Biological therapies: These are new drugs that work faster than conventional DMARDs. They hinder specific cells in the immune system from causing inflammation, targeting the underlying cause of hip pain.   
• Target synthetic DMARDs: These include JAK inhibitors that stop the activity of Janus Kinase enzymes, which take part in the inflammation that triggers symptoms of arthritis. 

Mainly, these drugs cure the underlying cause of your condition and minimize inflammation. Therefore, consult your doctor for the one that’ll work best for you. Sometimes, your doctor may prescribe a combination of conventional DMARDs and biological therapies. 

• Analgesics  

These drugs are primarily used to relieve pain in any body part, including the hips. Analgesics work by altering how the brain detects and processes pain or reducing inflammation at the painful part. They suit patients who can’t take NSAIDs due to stomach issues or allergies. You may find some analgesics over the counter, but you can acquire advanced variants only with a prescription. That’s because solid analgesics can cause side effects like addiction and dependence. 

Conclusion 

Hip pain can affect other body parts, including the buttocks, groin, thighs, back, and legs. It can impact everyday activities like walking and may even cause severe issues. Luckily, various treatment options for hip pain can cure mild and severe pain. Therefore, ensure you visit your doctor for an early diagnosis, get the correct treatment, and live a better life.