Normal male hip arthritis xray plus#

Today’s Common Practice of a Hip Arthritis X-Ray and Then Surgery By submitting the form you agree that you've read and consent to our Privacy Policy.

We do not sell, or share your information to third party vendors. So if MRIs already weren’t cutting it, why are we now diagnosing pain with nothing more than a simple X-ray? I’ve been sharing these knee surgery and MRI studies with you since way back in 2008, when the New England Journal published a study showing 60% of people with meniscus tears present on MRI did not actually have any knee pain. This lack of association between knee pain and MRI findings is nothing new.

Normal male hip arthritis xray plus#

So meniscus tears on MRI plus knee pain should not result in knee surgery. Many of us develop them as we age, and just as many people who don’t have knee pain have meniscus tears. Meniscus tears seen on MRI are no more significant than wrinkles or gray hair. If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know how opposed I am to most meniscus surgery. And many patients who undergo surgery for these conditions due to their pain still complain of hip pain.Īnother common surgery we see being done based no MRI findings is meniscus-tear repair. Here again, the MRI is an inaccurate indicator for diagnosing the cause of hip pain as many patients with no pain can show signs of tears and impingement on their MRI. Hip arthroscopies are also being done for tears of the labrum and hip impingement found on MRI and associated with the patient’s hip pain. Another study found MRI worthless in diagnosing spinal stenosis as the cause of pain. Yet a recent study concluded no relationship between the finding of spinal stenosis on MRI and pain. If an MRI shows compressed nerves due to arthritis (stenosis), then the patient must have pain. Lumbar stenosis is another MRI finding that many doctors will find significant when a patient has hip pain. However, one study showed that patients with a hole in their knee cartilage didn’t have any greater chance of having pain as those without a hole in their cartilage. Most physicians, for example, who see a hole in the cartilage on MRI in a patient with knee pain would automatically associate the two. Many studies I’ve covered over the years also show that MRI findings simply aren’t a very accurate predictor of hip or knee pain.