Typically, the pain is worse at night, when lying on the affected hip, and when getting up from a chair after being seated for a while. It also may get worse with prolonged walking, stair climbing, or squatting.
Activities or positions that put pressure on the hip bursa, such as lying down, sitting in one position for a long time, or walking distances can irritate the bursa and cause more pain.
Symptoms of bursitis of the hip
Symptoms include joint pain and tenderness. You may also see swelling and feel warmth around the affected area. The pain is often sharp in the first few days. It may be dull and achy later.
Bursitis. Bursae are small sacs of fluid meant to keep tendons from rubbing against nearby bones. Bursitis is an inflammation that impacts the bursae in your joints, including the hip joints. Overexertion of the hips may lead to this inflammation, which can cause pain during walking near the affected joint.
Symptoms and diagnosis
With all of these conditions, the pain lingers or even worsens when you lie on your side, or when you sit and cross your legs. It may ease with activity. But left untreated, the pain can become so severe that you're unable to walk.
Tendons and bursae are located near joints. Inflamed soft tissues will often be felt by patients as joint pain. This will be mistaken for arthritis. Symptoms of bursitis and tendonitis are similar.
Inflammation of your bursa can cause stiffness and pain, making it difficult to sit, walk, stand, or sleep.
Is Walking Good for Bursitis? Exercise is often prescribed to improve joint pain, so walking could be a vital part of managing your bursitis symptoms. However, you need to be careful and talk to your doctor before walking longer distances.
Initially, the pain may be located primarily at the outside of the lower hip. Over time the pain may radiate down the outside of the thigh or to other points in the body, such as the lower back, buttock, or groin, and may extend down the outside of the thigh towards the knee.
Hip bursitis happens when the bursa fills with extra fluid and becomes inflamed. This inflammation puts pressure on the nearby tissue and causes discomfort.
Pain from bursitis in your hip tends to get worse after you've been sitting or lying down. The pain may also increase when you do a repetitive activity, like climbing stairs.
Injections. A corticosteroid drug injected into the bursa can relieve pain and inflammation in your shoulder or hip. This treatment generally works quickly and, in many cases, one injection is all you need.
Stretching and strengthening the hip area and your core can quickly improve your pain when walking. Changing up your exercise routine from high impact exercise like jogging to a low impact exercise like swimming can also help prevent hip pain.
Pain that doesn't go away
Hip bursitis (trochanteric bursitis) may be a sign of a more serious issue. If you continue to have bursitis pain at the hip that has not improved despite extensive treatment, you may have a tear of a muscle located next to the bursa called the gluteus medius.
It's also really important when suffering this type of pain, to avoid sitting with you legs crossed. At least until your symptoms settle down. It's also important that you sit with your hips a little bit higher than your knees to prevent compression of the hips tendons and bursa.
Recovery. With proper care, most people begin to feel better quickly, with symptoms resolving in six to 10 weeks. Physical activities should be resumed gradually, so the problem doesn't recur.
Unfortunately, the recovery time for hip bursitis can take quite a while. Many patients tend to recover in about six weeks, but others can spend as many as 12 weeks recovering from hip bursitis. One way patients can speed up their recovery time is with physical therapy.
If you try to 'push through' the pain of bursitis, you'll only cause additional inflammation. If you have bursitis of the shoulder or elbow, use your other arm instead of the affected arm, at least until the pain subsides.
In the early stages, the pain is usually described as sharp and intense. Later, the pain may become more of an ache and spread across a larger area of the hip. Typically, the pain is worse at night, when lying on the affected hip, and when getting up from a chair after being seated for a while.
What bursitis feels like. Trochanteric bursitis brings warmth, swelling and pain to your outer thigh that can spread down to your knee.
Sudden inability to move a joint. Excessive swelling, redness, bruising or a rash in the affected area. Sharp or shooting pain, especially when you exercise or exert yourself.
Bursitis causes swelling, tenderness and pain in areas around a joint. It will be painful to move the affected joint through its full range of motion. The pain of bursitis can occur suddenly, may last for days or longer and usually gets better with rest or treatment.
If septic bursitis is left untreated, the fluid inside the bursa can turn to pus. In addition, the infection can spread to the bloodstream and other parts of the body. If the infection spreads, symptoms will become worse and the infection can even become life-threatening.
Bursitis is when a joint becomes painful and swollen. It can usually be treated at home and should go away in a few weeks.