Symptoms of osteoarthritis of the hip

Hip osteoarthritis can have different symptoms. First and foremost, you feel a lot of pain. It is not know for sure why osteoarthritis is painful. It may have several causes. The damaged cartilage surface and the subsequent irritation may trigger pain. One will try to compensate for the painful joint, which can lead to the muscles and tendons around the hip becoming tender and painful.

In many cases you may experience pain when you've been sitting for a while and start using the hip again. After having walked or moved for a while, there is some pain relief, but after a while the pain starts up again, maybe even more severely than it had been. This is known as "pain triad" because of the three phases: pain, then relief and then pain again.

The pain may be localised in the groin and sometimes you feel knee pain. This can be challenging because initially one may think that it is a case of osteoarthritis of the knee, although it actually is osteoarthritis of the hip.

Since the cartilage in the hip is damaged, the bones don't glide as easily against each other as when it's healthy and intact. Pieces of cartilage may break loose and become lodged inside the joint, so it can't move normally. The increased fluid and swelling inside the knee also causes the movement to be worse, and gradually the ligaments and tendons surrounding the hip joint will become shortened, which also leads to poor circulation.

When you have a sore hip and can't move about normally, and can't sleep at night due to the pain, this naturally affects your quality of life. It's frustrating to not be able to go for walks or sleep at night because of pain. It becomes especially bad when ordinary painkillers have no effect.