According to a recent study, those steroid injections may be putting hip arthritis patients’ bones at risk. When reading follow-up radiographs of patients who had received the hip injections, the team noticed changes had developed rapidly in some of them. Chang noted that patients receiving hip injections have symptoms of hip pain severe enough to require the injection and may be prone to faster progression of bony changes compared to the control groups. Two musculoskeletal radiologists independently reviewed the X-ray images of the patients who received the injections and those of two control groups matched to demographics and follow-up imaging duration. They observed bone collapse in the head of the femur bone, located at the top of the femur at the articulation with the pelvic bone, in 15-17% of hip injection patients, versus four percent of hip control patients and two percent of shoulder control patients.

Source: Hindustan Times November 30, 2017 10:07 UTC