7 Care Tips For Seniors With Hip Pain

Caring for an elderly person may not be an easy task to accomplish even for skilled people, let alone providing for their medical needs. It’d also be an equally difficult duty to help your older family members get through their health issues if you lack adequate knowledge about how to do so. While that’s understandable for a beginner, that shouldn’t hinder you from ensuring your loved one’s optimal health and overall well-being.

Fortunately, there are numerous alternatives and methods you can utilize to efficiently improve your family member’s health. The options you go for would depend on your loved one’s condition, so see to it that you choose the most suitable health care establishment for their needs. For instance, if they’re suffering from ailments like hip pain, it’s advisable to seek the help of medical service providers such as Altenburg Joint Replacement Surgery that specialize in addressing that kind of issue.

To learn more about the condition and how you can help your loved one get through it; keep reading this article. 

What You Need To Know About Hip Pain

Hip pain is one of the most common types of age-related illnesses prevalent among many people, especially elders. This particular medical condition varies depending on its causes and symptoms. Therefore, it’s crucial to know where this inexplicable ailment is coming from to better determine the proper medication for it.

If your elder family member has been feeling a persistent ache in their hip or groin, then that might be a sign of hip pain. Those unexplainable, painful sensations coming from one’s outside hip, upper thigh, or outer buttocks mustn’t be disregarded as they could be connected to the swelling of soft tissues in their hip joint.

Here are some crucial pieces of information regarding the illness that you have to be aware of:

• Intrinsically, hip pain is a medical condition characterized by feelings of mild to extreme pain in or around the hip joint. It also has to do with the strange aches one experiences in the thigh bone, also called the ‘femur,’ which is near the hip joint.
• In most cases, people suffer from this due to weak femur or sudden accidents. Although the femur can be considered one of the strongest bones in one’s body, it can still weaken and turn brittle due to age.
• Apart from that, the condition is often associated with osteoporosis as it’s one of the most prominent factors that lead to the problem. 

Hip Pain: Causes And Symptoms 

Regardless of the various advancements and innovations in the field of medicine, there are a lot of things to discover about the proper medications and treatments for hip pain. It’s also crucial for you to know the right time to seek a professional, especially if you’re noticing some of its symptoms in your loved ones.

To have a better understanding of that aspect, these are some of the triggers of pain in the hip:

• Arthritis: This condition is considered one of the most common reasons behind hip pain. While it was commonly associated with rheumatoid arthritis, it’s necessary to know that the latter could significantly affect one’s bones that could lead to bone erosion and joint deformity. On the other hand, arthritis could cause tender joints, stiff muscles, and inexplicable aches aside from causing difficulty in walking among elders.
• Bursitis (inflammation of a joint): Also known as trochanteric bursitis, this is another prominent factor that leads to hip pain. Bursitis could occur due to excessive inflammation in the bursa, which is a liquid-filled sac near the hip joint.
• Tendinitis (inflammation in tendons): Like bursitis, tendinitis is a condition characterized by inflammation in the connective joints between one’s tendons and bones. Due to repetitive activities, many people could feel signs of tendinitis in their knee, hip, shoulder, and elbow.
• Osteoporosis: This condition is one of the primary causes of brittle bones. People with osteoporosis are more prone to fractures and injuries due to the weakness of their bones. Aging, low body weight, and unhealthy lifestyles are some of the most common factors behind this condition.
• Cancer: This is the excessive growth of abnormal cells in one’s body, causing them to form tumors, which are lumps of tissues. Due to this illness, patients face more risks of suffering from bone loss and fractures.
• Osteomyelitis (bone infection): Osteomyelitis is the result of an infection getting to the bone via the bloodstream. This condition commonly affects the narrow portions of long bones, including the femur and tibia.
• Hip labral tear: Commonly known as a tear to the labrum, a hip labral tear could affect the soft tissues that cover the socket (acetabulum) of the hip. It could occur due to degenerative issues and injuries, while its symptoms may include hip pain or stiffness.

Some of the most common signs of the condition include limping, tenderness of the hip, swelling over the affected areas near the hip, joint pain, difficulty in side sleeping, groin pain, and loss of hip motion.

Alleviating Hip Pain 

Although hip pain isn’t a foreign concept in the medical field, many people still have a hard time dealing with it, especially those who have little knowledge about it. As the older generations are the ones more prone to this condition, it’s crucial to know some of the treatments you can look into to help your senior loved one manage their illness. Here’s a list of the options you can consider:

1. Seek Various Types Of Medications

Dealing with the signs of pain in the hip can be daunting and challenging, but with adequate knowledge and tools, this condition could be treated and managed. Specifically, you have to seek professional help and medical care at the first indications of hip pain. Although this may sound like a normal condition, it could affect people in many ways, especially those of advanced age.

Usually, treatments for it could vary depending on its causes and the underlying factors that lead to it. In managing this particular health issue, it’s important to know first what’s causing it before looking for ways to prevent complications and infections. In some cases, the pain can be resolved by engaging in physical activities and getting sufficient rest. However, if things get out of hand, it’d be better to seek proper medication.

The most common types of medications you can take to manage signs of pain in the hip include prescription drugs such as:

• Counterirritants
• Corticosteroids
• Opioid analgesics
• Disease-modifying anti-rheumatics drugs (DMARDs) 
• Biologic response modifiers
• Bisphosphonates
• Creams and ointments
• Hormone therapy medication

One of the many good things about these medicines is that they slow down symptoms of hip pain and could prevent it from affecting other tissues and organs. Several of them could also promote bone strength, prevent further damage, and manage pain responses. To obtain better results, it’s best to consult your trusted doctor and physician.

2. Contact A Reliable Nursing Home Facility 

Some people may not know it, but assisted living facilities could be of great value in helping their elderly loved ones get through their condition. For instance, you can contact a reliable nursing home facility and seek their assistance if you’re having a hard time looking after your family member’s medical needs.

Besides the ceaseless efforts of health professionals, geriatric nursing care plans and nursing home facilities have long helped elder people manage their illnesses, including age-related ones like osteoarthritis and hip pain. These nursing schemes primarily focus on the promotion, restoration, and improvement of one’s health and wellness as well as prevention and control of risks of diseases and injuries.

Through the collaborative efforts of the patient’s family, community, and other health care providers, providing nursing care for elders has been made easier over the decades. It’s also more convenient for first-timers to maintain the quality of life of their elderly family members.

3. Consider Alternative Treatments 

When it comes to dealing with hip pain, one of the primary things you must do is to consult a licensed physician about your family member’s condition and ask for their findings before you opt for any medications. Afterward, that’s the only time you can search for proper medications appropriate for your loved one’s situation.

If you’re looking for alternatives you can utilize along with your family member’s medication, you can consider using several complementary treatments such as acupressure, acupuncture, neurostimulation, and muscle relaxation therapies.

Although there’s still a lot to know about the link between these alternative treatments and hip pain, many people believe that such options could create a huge difference in easing symptoms among elders. Of course, before you let your loved one undergo any of these treatments, it’s better to take them to a doctor who can recommend the appropriate type of medication for them.

4. Go For A Femoral-Obturator Nerve Block Treatment

Apart from the aforementioned alternative treatments, you might want to check other beneficial options for your family member. Among the most common solutions to hip pain is a femoral-obturator nerve block treatment.

Although it’s commonly associated with epidural analgesia, a nerve block treatment uses medicines with anesthesia to block pain and numb the nerves in the affected area. For pain in the hip, a doctor or an anesthesiologist could inject the medicines around the hip area or near the groin.

A femoral-obturator nerve block treatment could temporarily desensitize one’s nerves and help ease their pain. Aside from that, this particular type of medication could lessen the inflammation in certain areas of one’s hip and manage signs of chronic hip pain.

5. Try Physical Therapy And Hydrotherapy

Besides taking medications, seeking assistance from nursing home facilities, and opting for a nerve block treatment, other ideal alternative treatments are physical therapy and hydrotherapy. Although you might need to allocate an additional budget for these options, there are many benefits your elderly loved one can gain from them.

Specifically, physical therapy could help elders get back to their normal functioning and efficiently cope with hip pain. There’s also no going around the fact that these non-pharmacological options could significantly improve one’s pain management and tolerance. Apart from that, hydrotherapy could promote proper blood circulation in one’s body and control signs of the condition.

If you’re wondering how to contact a skilled physical therapist, numerous in-home care service providers offer assistance with that matter so you can hire one for your elderly relative. You can also hire palliative care nursing staff who’ll look after the patient’s health and wellness.

6. Encourage Them To Exercise 

Although there are a lot of treatment options available to sufferers of hip pain, engaging in physical activities doesn’t fall short of helping some people better cope with the symptoms of that condition. 

Not only that, but exercise proves to be a crucial measure that efficiently reduces risks of pain in the hip and osteoarthritis. Implementing simple yet highly efficient exercise routines could enhance mobility, strength, and flexibility among elders. For people with aching hips, it’s highly recommended to engage in physical activities such as yoga, water exercise, walking, and jogging. You can look for gentle routines your elderly relative can do regularly, and introduce them to deep breathing exercises as well.

7. Teach Them Some Stretches

If you’re looking for another simple idea, go ahead and teach your loved one some stretching routines. Executing stretches could help reduce aches due to strained muscles and hip problems. This can be easily done anytime, and it can help keep one’s body in its healthiest state.

Coping With Pain 

Individuals in their senior years are more prone to illnesses because of their age. Due to their susceptibility to diseases, they're more likely to suffer from illnesses not common among younger people such as visual impairment, hearing loss, osteoarthritis, and hip pain.

Fortunately, with the help of numerous technological advancements in the medical field and far-ranging types of medications, treatments, and surgeries for elderly patients, you won’t have to worry that much about your senior relatives anymore. All of these options have become of great value for many people in terms of coping with hip pain, so ask your trusted doctor which of them is right for your loved one