Grant: Pro. Gr. - PA: Inst. of Musculoskeletal Health and Arthritis: IMHA Mandate Areas

We are trying to understand if there is such a thing as hip microinstability and if it causes arthritis. In hip microinstability, individuals have hip pain that seems to be caused by a loose and unsteady hip joint. It is important to understand microinstability better to improve treatment and because it may cause hip osteoarthritis, and surgery to stabilize the hip might protect the joint from osteoarthritis. This has been hard to study to date because we have had no measure of how loose and unsteady the hip joint is. We have developed new measures of hip stability using a specialized MRI machine that allows us to measure hip movement for the first time in the postures that surgeons use to test for clinical microinstability. We will compare these measures between people with microinstability and people with normal hips, and also look at how much different factors associated with microinstability (like some measures on xrays) affect hip stability. We will then see if there are early signs of cartilage degeneration in hips that are unstable. The result will be a better understanding of how microinstability affects the hip, which will help surgeons identify patients and plan surgery to protect hips.