Lower back and hip pain

Lower back and hip pain can be a consequence of the same condition or several different conditions. Painful lower back can spread usually through one or both legs.

Causes

Causes of lower back pain are really numerous, but most commonly, degenerate processes cause that pain, and beside lower back, they affect the hip, too. The combination of these two symptoms can be found in inflammation processes, in injuries, congenital problems, deformities, benign tumors, primary, and secondary malign tumors. Problems can be acute, chronic and those that return after being eliminated once. Most common factor that connects lower back and hip pain is spondylosis deformans, which is a degeneration change in the spine that can be accelerated with different factors, such as injuries and illnesses. Those changes are emphasized with non-frequent and gradual pain, especially when the spine is under the physical strain. After a while, the mobility of that spine region is gone and after that, hip pain occurs. The treatment is non-operative and it consists of elimination of exogenous factors (regulating all sorts of disorders, weight regulation, even profession change, if necessary) and application of different methods of physical therapy. Unfortunately, the therapy usually lasts for very long and also requires the use of several medications, such as sedatives, analgesics etc.

Spondylitis

There are several serious conditions that have pain in the mentioned areas as one of the symptoms. One of those conditions is spondylitis ankylopoetica, which is an interesting condition because the first step of the illness begins in collagen tissue and that is why this condition cannot be easily diagnosed, at least until the later stages. Only when the late symptoms arrive, the doctors can recognize the conditions and those symptoms include the mentioned pain, ankylosis of the spine elements, including bones and ligaments. In serious cases, knees and hips are also affected, the spine bends and its shape resembles the bamboo stick. There are additional changes on the heart, lungs, eyes, muscles, tendons, skin etc. It is not yet certain what the exact cause of this condition is and all that is known for sure is that men are much more affected, even ten times more, and usually those are the men in the age between 18 and 40.

The treatment is also long and difficult and it includes several methods. Medications have to be used in order to deal with the pain and other symptoms; physical therapy is intensive and frequent because further progress of this illness has to be stopped. In severe cases, artificial joints can be used, especially for knees and hips.