Osteoarthritis of the hip

Osteoarthritis of the hip:

The symptoms of osteoarthritis usually come on slowly. Joint pain, often described as a deep ache, is the most common symptom. Early in the disease, the pain does not usually last longer than a couple of hours. It may occur only after physical exercise. The pain subsides once you rest the joint. Occasionally, pain caused by osteoarthritis occurs someplace other than in the affected joint—a condition known as “referred pain.” For example, people with osteoarthritis of the neck often experience referred pain in the shoulder.

As the disease progresses, the pain may persist for longer stretches of time. Not everyone with osteoarthritis experiences pain; in fact, only one-third of people whose x-rays show evidence of osteoarthritis having joint pain or other symptoms of the disease.

Osteoarthritis commonly causes stiffness, particularly during activity and in the morning after you get out of bed. The stiffness usually lasts less than 20 minutes. You may also experience brief stiffness after inactivity, such as riding in a car or sitting in a movie theater. The short duration of stiffness distinguishes osteoarthritis from rheumatoid arthritis, which is characterized by longer periods of stiffness usually during the morning hours.

As osteoarthritis progresses, your range of movement (or flexibility) in the affected joint may become more limited. You may find it increasingly difficult, for example, to a jar, sew on buttons, or turn your neck to look over your shoulder while driving. You may also notice a crunching feeling or a grating sound when you move the affected joint--the result of the roughened cartilage on the surface of the bones rubbing together.

When osteoarthritis affects your hands, bony knobs called nodes may develop on your joints, giving your fingers and thumbs a gnarled appearance. Nodes that appear on the joint closest to your fingernail are known as Heberden's nodes; those that appear on the middle joint are called Bouchard's nodes.

The affected finger and thumb joints may feel painful or stiff at first, although the pain usually subsides within time. For some people, the pain is gone in as early as a few months, and for others it make take a couple of years. However, the bony knobs will remain. Heberden's nodes and Bouchard's nodes usually take years to develop, although they can sometimes appear within a period of weeks or months.