'Do Patient Characteristics Associate With Poor Outcome With Femoral Acetabular Impingement Syndrome (FAIS) Following Physiotherapy-led Rehabilitation'

Starting soon

Conditions studied: Femoral Acetabular Impingement

In brief

Background: The hip joint is a ball and socket joint where the ball inserts into the socket. The ball shape is round but sometimes the ball has a bony bump on it. When the ball moves in the socket, the bump can hit the edge of the socket causing pain in movements like squatting or kicking a ball. Repeated hitting of the bump in the socket can cause hip pain, damage, and arthritis. This is called hip impingement and is found in 10-15% of young adults. Does Physiotherapy treatment work? Exercises from a physiotherapist make the muscles stronger around the hip joint which alters the way the ball moves. This stops the bump hitting the socket and this can help reduce the pain. However, an experiment found only 32% of people doing exercises got better. So, why after strengthening the muscles are some people still in pain? Is there another source of pain? Other causes of pain? The investigators know things like people's emotions such as 'feeling down' can affect pain. An experiment the investigators did, found neuropathic pain in people with hip impingement. This pain is caused by a disease of the nerves that provide information about your body. This can be a cause of pain even if your muscles are strong. In both situations, strengthening your muscles may not be the best choice. The investigators need to know more about types of pain in people with hip impingement to give better treatment. Aim To look at causes of hip impingement in people before they have physiotherapy treatment, to see if the investigators can find a reason why some people don't get better after strengthening their muscles. Project design The investigators will review the research to see if people with hip impingement may feel for example, sad, anxious or scared of moving their hip, which could be a reason why some people don't get better after doing their strengthening exercises. The investigators will invite 175 adults with hip impingement who have been referred for physiotherapy-led treatment to join this study. The participants will have 2 research appointments, 30-60 minutes each. The first one before the start of their physiotherapy treatment, the second one will be 4 months after starting their physiotherapy treatment. At both appointments the participants will complete special questionnaires designed to explore emotions and causes of pain. The investigators will compare the results of the questionnaires which will give more information about the causes of pain and how people view their pain. This will give the investigators a better understanding why strengthening exercises may not be the best treatment. Patient and public involvement (PPI) The investigators presented this project to 23 members of the public (who help researchers with their projects) at our monthly meeting. They thought this project was a good idea, especially talking about things like anxiety and depression. This will form part of the questionnaires. Patients told the investigators about their thoughts of having pain following treatment for hip pain. They felt further knowledge into why they had pain and help with mental and emotional support was important to them. They told the investigators about their concerns over the lack of information about what treatment can and cannot achieve. They were reluctant to suggest treatment. Three patients would like to help the investigators further design the study so that the information available to the public is clear and concise.

Key facts

Study ID: NCT07460401
Run by: University of Oxford
People needed: 175
Starts: 2026-04-06
Expected to finish: 2028-01-31
Last updated by the study team: 2026-04-02

Who can join

Age: 18 and older, up to 55. Sex: any. Healthy volunteers: not accepted.

You may qualify if…

Participants aged between 18 and 55 years
Diagnosis of symptomatic FAIS following a formal clinical assessment - Appropriate imaging: MRI/Arthrogram, and /or Xray and/or CT (secondary care pathway for diagnosis but this is optional).
Awaiting PLR
No previous surgery to the index hip
Have capacity to give informed consent
English as a spoken language

You may not qualify if…

Presence of hip dysplasia, femoral stress fracture, synovitis or other inflammatory arthropathy (psoriatic arthropathy)
Kellgren-Lawrence grading of Osteoarthritis ≥2 (to exclude moderate OA which could be a confounding influence on pain)
Avascular necrosis of the femoral head
Previous surgery to index hip
Previous physiotherapy treatment to the index hip in the past 6 months
Current pregnancy
Perthes disease
Involved in a current research study involving the hip

Where it is running

Nuffield Department of Orthopaedics, Rheumatology and Musculoskeletal Sciences — Oxford, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom

Full record on ClinicalTrials.gov

Trial information comes from ClinicalTrials.gov and is refreshed daily. TrialsForMe does not provide medical care and does not run the studies it lists.