Developmental Causes of Hip Bone Pain

Featuring Dr. Bassam Masri, MD, FRCSC

Duration: 2 minutes, 8 seconds

There are other reasons for hip pain besides osteoarthritis.  

In younger patients, you can have what we call developmental conditions or what people refer to as congenital conditions, things that you’re born with.

We prefer the term developmental because as the bones grow and remodel as we’re growing, particularly in the adolescent years, you can have an abnormality in the development of the shape of the hip joint.  

In adolescent girls, or ultimately in women, you can have a condition called developmental dysplasia, which means that you’ve got a shallow socket, as opposed to a fully formed socket. And that increases the load on the hip joint, causing early degeneration and early pain.  

So dysplasia in and of itself can cause some pain before you get the osteoarthritis. On the flip side, in men on occasion, there’s a condition called femoroacetabular impingement, which comes in two different flavors or two different types.

And that’s related to the abnormal relationship between the ball and the socket of the hip joint. There’s one that’s called the cam type, so instead of the – in very, very simple terms, instead of the femoral head being a nice sphere that’s articulating against the spherical socket, it’s a little out of round. 

So as it rotates within the joint, it forms what’s called a cam effect. So it starts to list off a little bit. As it lifts off, it can – the neck of the femur can rub against the socket, can injure something called the labrum, which is a piece of cartilage on the outside of the hip, and ultimately, it can lead to degeneration and osteoarthritis.  

But before you get the osteoarthritis, you can develop some pain, particularly in deep flexion activities, as you’re sitting down, bending forward, riding a bike, trying to climb ladders, trying to go up two or three steps at a time.

Those sorts of activities cause some groin pain, and that’s called femoroacetabular impingement. And the treatment is very different from a hip replacement.

Find out more about hip pain symptoms and treatments.

Presenter: Dr. Bassam Masri, Orthopaedic Surgeon, Vancouver, BC

Local Practitioners: Orthopaedic Surgeon