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Hip-back symptoms require a variety of treatments
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Patients who present with leg and back pain can pose an interesting challenge to surgeons because the combined presentation makes it difficult to determine the predominant source of the patient’s pain. Sources who spoke with Orthopaedics Today Europe said clinicians need to perform a thorough examination of a patient who presents with hip pain or back pain, or both, to successfully identify the hip-back connection and treat it.
The hip-back syndrome can typically affect elderly patients who present with pain that can either be diagnosed as a hip condition or spine a condition, according to Adrian C. Gardner, BM, MRCS FRCS (T&O), of the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital, in Birmingham, United Kingdom.
“Firstly, by definition, hip-spine pain usually refers to the group of more elderly (but not always) patients who present with symptoms of back and leg pain of various types where the spine and/or the hip may be the culprit. By usual consensus, low back pain extends distally to the inferior part of the buttock, thus buttock pain is included as back pain. Spinal pain is usually felt in the back and can radiate to the buttock. Radicular pain is felt in the leg as a result of nerve root irritation in the sclerotome of that nerve. Hence, irritation of the L5 nerve root will give pain in the posterior thigh, lateral calf and anterolateral foot (the sciatic pain), but the sensory loss is in the L5 dermatome and weakness in the L5 myotome only,” Gardner told Orthopaedics Today Europe.
Click here to read the full story in the October issue of Orthopaedics Today Europe.