I’ve been plagued with hip pain for the last 8 months, diagnosed with bursitis in May, treated with a cortisone injection May 1st, which didn’t alleviate the pain. I’ve been going to PT since May but I still haven’t seem improvement. Running is out of the question and cycling seems to aggravate it as well.
I went back to the orthopedic doc today, he ordered an MRI and prescribed a Medrol dose pack to take after the MRI is done.
Any thoughts, experience? I really want to get this taken care of but for some reason taking oral steroids freaks me out a bit…
Medrol dose pack is a pretty mild course (5 day taper of methylprednisolonone). If anything, it will give you a little extra “pep” and make you hungry. I use LOTS of Medrol dose packs in people and they are very well tolerated since it is NOT the same as a high taper of oral prednisone.
I see rroof’s reply above. I am not a doctor, but know one of the top orthopaedic surgeons in the country. About 2 months ago one of my friends was considering a Medrol Dosepack, and asked me to check with my doctor friend. My doctor friend told me to never consider it. His take was that there is an occurence rate of avascular necrosis of the head of the femur in about 1 in 10,000 (maybe 100,000?) uses. The result of avascular necrosis of the head of the femur is that you require a hip replacement. He said he has replaced the hips of 10 or 20 such people in his career. (Hip replacement is a specialty for him.)
So, I don’t want to start an argument, as I only know what I was told, and my memory is not always good. The risk as he presented, and I remember, would be enough to make me stay away. The risk is small, but the downside HUGE; as in you may never run competitively again.
Now, if I felt I had done absolutely everything possible to alleviate the problem, and this was the last resort, would I take it? I can’t say for sure, but likely no.
You are correct about that risk (and nice job pointing that out) - although she had a “higher” risk of that already from the corticosteroid injection! The “relative” risk, however, is quite rare. In fact, it is reported in the literature, but I am not aware of any 1:1,000 or 1:1,000,000 stats - that is just conjecture. Will seem pretty rare (if ever) to a a Dermatologist prescribing it all day long for skin conditions, etc. and much higher to the orthopedic surgeon who does hip replacements
