Intra-articular injections are a means of medium-term control of the symptoms of hip osteoarthritis. The agents most commonly used are corticosteroids, hyaluronic acid, biologic agents and combinations of these.
A new study, in the form of a meta-analysis, reports the results of intra-articular injection of the hip with various preparations, as published across multiple studies.
A systematic review was carried out, examining the results of injections with hyaluronic acid, corticosteroids, biologic agents, and hyaluronic acid combined with biologic agents for hip osteoarthritis.
A systematic literature search of the PubMed, Embase, Web of Science and Cochrane databases was carried out in April 2018 in order to identify randomised controlled trials assessing the clinical effectiveness of injections in patients with hip osteoarthritis.
In total, 11 randomised clinical trials in 1060 patients were studied.
The authors concluded that intra-articular corticosteroid injections of the hip are recommended as the most effective agent for the medium-term control of the symptoms of hip osteoarthritis. Also, biologic agents are reported to have the greatest effectiveness in controlling pain for up to six months.
Source: “Arthroscopy”, January 2020