LATERAL HIP PAIN

If you are experiencing pain or tenderness over the side of the hip, this may be due to problems around the prominent bit of bone you can feel at the side of your hip, roughly at the level of the top of your pocket if you are wearing jeans. This is an important bit of bone and the hip joint as major muscles attach to it that are very important for walking normally and the function of your hip.

 

If you are experiencing pain over the side of the hip and there is tenderness there, the problem is most likely to be coming from one of two areas. The first is the attachment of the big muscles from the pelvis onto the trochanter at the top of the femur (thigh bone). These tendons can be damaged if your hip is injured and chronic damage can occur as you get older where the tendon is not detached but there are a series of small tears or chronic inflammation in the tendons. This can lead to weakness of the muscles or overlying swelling and inflammation that causes pain. If you actively use the abductor muscles, they lift your leg away from the side of your body. This is not something that you will probably spend much time doing in your normal day, but you do use these muscles every time you take a step. As you take the weight off your opposite leg, these muscles activate to stop your body weight from pulling you down on the opposite side. Effectively they stop you from falling over when you lift the other foot off the ground. If the muscles become weak and you are walking, in order to compensate and prevent yourself from falling over, you will tend to throw your bodyweight back over the bad hip, leading to a typical lurching gait.

 

The other area where problems typically occur is in the soft tissues overlying the side of the hip. Here there is a thickened band of tissue that muscles attach to. To reduce friction, there is a small fluid filled sack that sits between the thick band of tissue and the side of the bone. Tissue in this area can become irritated, producing more fluid which leads to a vicious circle of injury and irritation. This can sometimes happen at the same time as damage to the muscle tendons as described above, due to prominence of the bone or a band of tissue that is too tight, or it can occur after hip replacement ssurgery.

 

You may feel that it is tender over the side of your hip. You will probably particularly notice this if you lie on the side of the hip and it often feels like you are lying on something lumpy or irritating. You may also feel an ache over the side of the hip when you have been walking or performing other activity and you may feel that the hip feels weak or tired quite quickly.