Hip Pain

The hips are very commonly reported areas of discomfort. This pain becomes exceptionally common as people age, due to the “wear and tear” of cartilage in the hips, and lower back. However, people can also experience hip pain from overuse, injury, or underlying conditions, such as arthritis. Some cases may become severe enough that surgery is unavoidable; however, physiotherapy has been proven to treat hip pain without the need for pain-relieving drugs or surgery.

What are the causes of hip pain?

Arthritis:

• Osteoarthritis (disease-causing the breakdown of joints)
• Rheumatoid arthritis 
• Septic arthritic 

Injuries:

• Bursitis (joint inflammation)
• Dislocation/subluxation
• Hip fracture
• Hip labral tear
• Inguinal hernia
• Sprains
• Tendinitis

Pinched nerves:

• Meralgia paresthetica
• Sacroiliitis
• Sciatica 

Inflammatory:

• Osteomyelitis (a bone infection)
• Osteoporosis
• Synovitis

How is hip pain determined?

When you schedule an appointment with a physiotherapist, the first thing you can expect is a thorough Assessment. Your physiotherapist will examine you to figure out where the painful area is, as well as where the pain is coming from. For example, sometimes pain is in the hips but it can be coming from the lower back, buttocks, or groins.

Pain can be from an acute injury or trauma such as ligament sprains or from the muscle strains, it can be also from the chronic joint, ligament of muscles dysfunction.

Hip pain is typically reported as a constant dull ache that doesn’t seem to go away that can be caused by the internal joint pain. 

Getting Started With Physiotherapy

As part of your evaluation process, your physiotherapist will do the following things;

• Checking a range of motion – Your physiotherapist will check how your joint moves and how much they move
• Checking strength – Testing the strength of hip muscles gives ideas about muscle imbalance.
• Palpation – To Figure out where the pain is originating.
• Gait analysis – Your physiotherapist will assess how you walk to determine if anything is out of the ordinary with your gait.
• Your balance may also be checked.

Depending on your initial evaluation information, physiotherapists will be happy to help you with guiding proper exercises. Your prescribed exercises will help you strengthen the muscle structures around the knee or hip (or both) that’s bothering you and also help you to improve your mobility. Physiotherapists may use some modalities like ultrasound, laser therapy, Shockwave therapy or decompression to help you with the initial pain and inflammation. Your physiotherapist will work with you to monitor your progress and make sure you are on track to reaching your end goal. He or she will also encourage and support every achievement you make along the way!