Patients Overestimate the Pain Expereinced from Intra-Articular Hip Injections

Background:
Fear of injections is probably more common and may have impact with treatment compliance. Intra-articular injections to the hip joint may be performed as a treatment option or as a diagnostic tool. To our knowledge, the gap between anticipated and experienced pain of intra articular hip injections was not investigated.

Study Design:
Cohort study; Level of evidence, 3.

Methods:
This study included 25 patients who underwent intra articular hip injection by a radiologist (RD) for arthrography prior to magnetic resonance imaging versus 26 patients who underwent intra articular hip injection by an orthopedic specialist in the outpatient clinic (OC). Patient recruited to the study filled a questionnaire regarding anticipated and experienced pain, and factors that might influence the patient fear of injections.

Results:
Regardless to gender or injection method, the anticipated pain (mean VAS score 6.43) was rated significantly higher than the experienced pain (mean VAS score 3.68, P value<0.001). There was no significant difference between injection methods in terms of estimated VAS score (OC VAS 6.19, RD VAS 6.68, p value 0.489) and experienced VAS score (OC VAS 3.19, RD VAS score 4.2, p value 0.130). There was no significant difference between males to females in terms of estimated VAS score (p value 0.209) and experienced VAS score ( p value 0.203). The difference (delta) between estimated and experienced pain did not differ significantly between injection methods (p value=0.498) and gender (p value=0.970).

Conclusion:
A significant difference was found between anticipated and experienced pain from intra articular hip injections. There were no differences in pain variables in term of injection method and gender. Our study may help to reduce the gap between expected and actual level of pain experienced by the patient and therefore reduce fear of hip injections.