Lateral Hip Pain ruining your day?

Gluteal tendinopathy is a common and often disabling condition that can result in pain at the lateral hip. It can restrict activities of daily living and even sleep.

It more common in females especially at the perimenopausal stage however it is also very common in runners.

For a considerable length of time this condition was routinely diagnosed as “Trochanteric Bursitis”, however we are now aware that the more likely diagnosis is a gluteus Medius/Minimus tendinopathy.

The recent high quality LEAP trial recently produced the results of their study comparing 3 different treatment approaches by patients.

1) Specific exercises and education on load management (8 weeks)

2) A corticosteroid injection

3) Observation/ “Wait and See” approach

The primary outcome measures used to evaluate change were the global Rating of Change scale for the hip condition and hip pain intensity (0-10).

What do the results tell us?

At 8 weeks the pain intensity scores were as follows

– Exercise group 1.5/10

– Injection group 2.7/10

-Observation group 3.8/10

At 52 weeks the proportion of people across all 3 groups reporting at least “moderately better” on the Global Rating of Change scale were as follows

– Exercise group 78%

– Injection group 57%

– Observation group 52%

Take home message from this excellent study…

Tailored exercise and education was superior to both hip injection and observation in the management of gluteal tendinopathy.

Link: http://bmcmusculoskeletdisord.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12891-016-1043-6

Alison Molamphy

Physiotherapist

Regenerate Physiotherapy