Hip and knee pain
Chronic hip or knee pain changes your life by limiting your ability to walk, sit comfortably, sleep, exercise or perform normal daily activities.
Replacement surgery isn’t the only answer. Helping us to help you take care of your health can really help you overcome the day to day challenges of your condition and improve your quality of life.
Click here to view our leaflet which gives you information on your options and the small changes you can make to improve your health. Note: from 1 October 2019, people with a BMI of 30 or over will now be offered support to lose weight through a Health Optimisation Programme.
What causes hip and knee damage?
Some common reasons why a hip joint can become damaged include:
- Osteoarthritis – often age-related thinning of the cartilage leading to damage to the joint. Previous joint injury can also contribute to this.
- Rheumatoid arthritis – where the immune system attacks the lining of the joint, resulting in pain and stiffness.
- Hip fracture – the hip joint becomes severely damaged during a fall/accident and needs replacing.
The most common reason for knee damage is osteoarthritis. Other conditions include:
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Gout – a type of arthritis that causes sudden attacks of severe pain and swelling.
- Knee injury
When hip and knee pain interferes with your ability to move and live comfortably it’s time to speak to your doctor about what options are available to help. This will probably start with changes in lifestyle: exercise, weight loss and physiotherapy. If these options do not work, it’s time to discuss replacement surgery, look at what you hope to achieve with surgery and how it will benefit your quality of life.
Community Musculoskeletal Services in the East Riding of Yorkshire
During May and June 2018, we sought the views of patients and the public about services which support people with conditions affecting bones, ligaments, muscles and joints (for example back pain, shoulder and knee problems or muscular injuries). In particular, we looked at the community musculoskeletal (in short, "MSK") service to understand how this service is used, how easy it is to access and how satisfied people are
The survey was hosted online and promoted through local media, social media, information on the CCG website, our patient engagement group, our patient involvement network and through materials sent to GP practices and the MSK service. The survey received 112 responses which was translated into a public facing report and published on our website.
In November 2018, we also hosted an engagement workshop to seek further views and insight from patients suffering specifically with back pain. The aim of the session was:
- Establish new ways to support patients suffering with back pain to prevent the likelihood of it becoming chronic.
- Discuss patient stories and experiences.
- Establish reasonable expectations from both the patient and healthcare system.
- What an effective treatment pathway could look like.
- Feedback captured from this workshop was also published on our website and shared with the attendees.
As a result of our engagement work, in collaboration with ESCAPE-pain and East Riding Leisure, a pilot scheme has been launched focusing on supporting people suffering with hip and knee osteoarthritis to access self-management programmes to help them understand how to cope with their conditions using exercise. To find out more, including patient testimonials, please click here.
Since the pilot proved so successful, ESCAPE-pain will now be available for hundreds of patients across the East Riding each year. Click here for more information.