What is Hip Bursitis?
I have many patients coming in suffering from hip pain over the outside of their hip, right near where our hands hand down at our side. This is commonly diagnosed as hip bursitis. This is an inflammation of the bursa sac which is a fluid-filled sac intended to help tendons and muscles move over bones without injury. But sometimes they can be injured, swell, and cause pain. Hip bursitis is identified when a patient complains of pain over their hip area with standing or walking and then they touch right over the bone part of their hip they feel a deep ache or sometimes sharp pain. If you’re looking for more info on what is hip bursitis, I wrote a blog here with more depth.
How to Treat Hip Bursitis At Home
You have to remember the most important part of getting relief from treatment at home is in getting an accurate diagnosis. Hip bursitis is often misdiagnosed because inflammation in the bursa is not the root cause of the pain. Patients come to us after feeling frustrated with their lack of progress in regular physical therapy clinics because they didn’t get a thorough exam to identify the root cause and treat it effectively.
How to Know You Have Hip Bursitis
Other diagnoses include gluteal tendinopathy and hip arthritis. Both of these conditions present with pain over the outside area of the hip. Another, less common one, can be tensor fascia lata strain. But the way you know you have hip bursitis is with direct pressure over the top of the hip bone on the outside or lateral aspect of the hip. If direct pressure over that spot reproduces your pain you most likely have bursitis. However, that doesn’t mean that’s all you have. Bursitis often exists in combination with one of the aforementioned diagnoses because the bursa sac is a great place for swelling in the area to collect and cause pain without injury to the bursa. This swelling in the bursa will need to be addressed to adequately treat the root cause. Sadly, many patients and providers will stop when the pain and swelling in the bursa goes away thinking their condition is fixed. But the treatment didn’t address the cause of the swelling in the first place. This leads to lengthy recovery phases and frustrated patients. Many resort to dangerous cortisone injections to lower their pain to get some relief in the short term but risk more damage long term.
Dr, Nick’s greatest passion is seeing his patients recover from injury and return to their activities that bring them joy.
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March 28, 2018
