Intramuscular steroid injection reduced hip OA pain up to 12 weeks

March 13, 2018|Family Medicine

FROM ANNALS OF THE RHEUMATIC DISEASES

Systemic treatment with an intramuscular glucocorticoid injection is effective, compared with placebo, in reducing pain in people with hip osteoarthritis for up to 12 weeks, a double-blinded, placebo-controlled, randomized trial suggests.

However, the study found benefit with intramuscular (IM) glucocorticoid injection at 2 weeks only when patients were at rest, and did not find any significant benefit with the injection in reducing pain while walking or in reducing Western Ontario and McMaster University Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC) pain subscale scores. The report was published in Annals of the Rheumatic Diseases.

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Guidelines recommend intra-articular glucocorticoid injection in patients with painful hip OA, but the efficacy of the invasive procedure is unknown, which prompted Desirée M.J. Dorleijn of Erasmus MC University, Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and her associates to investigate whether an IM glucocorticoid injection is effective as “a less complex alternative treatment for episodes of increased pain in hip OA.”

The multicenter, double-blinded, superiority trial randomized 106 patients with painful hip OA who were not responding to oral analgesics to either 40 mg triamcinolone acetate (n = 52) or placebo injection (n = 54) into the gluteus muscle. Overall, 73 patients (68%) were women, and the average age of the cohort was 64 years. Hip OA symptoms had occurred for at least 1 year in 70% of the patients.