Injection therapy in hip osteoarthritis: one year in review

Abstract

Hip osteoarthritis affects a substantial and growing number of people worldwide. Its incidence and prevalence are increasing due to ageing and obesity. It is estimated that it affects between 10 and 18% of individuals over 60 years of age and up to 1 in 3 patients over the age of 85 with a substantial proportion of them experiencing persistent pain, loss of function and decline in health-related quality of life. Our work was aimed at updating the latest data on this field. We searched the following terms on PubMed: ‘injection therapy’, ‘osteoarthritis’ and ‘hip’. We limited our search to the period from 1-1-2018 until 22-6-2019 and to the English language. We retrieved 31 works. We decided to divide the works into three groups: hyaluronic acid in hip OA, other therapies in hip OA and emerging radiological techniques to measure the efficacy of injection therapy. So far, in the literature there is no solid evidence that supports the efficacy of intra-articular infiltration therapies in hip osteoarthritis. The international guidelines reflect this lack of solid scientific evidence. We believe that only original works that show high-level evidence can highlight the benefits of these therapies.