Treating Greater Trochanteric Pain Syndrome

Greater trochanteric pain syndrome (GTPS) is a common cause of hip pain. It can often be treated conservatively but sometimes requires medical intervention or even surgery.

Greater trochanteric pain syndrome (GTPS) is most common in people ages 40 to 60 who were assigned female at birth. It affects as many as 1.8 per 1,000 adults per year.

The main cause of GTPS was originally thought to be trochanteric bursitis — inflammation of a fluid-filled sac on the outer part of your hip called the greater trochanteric bursa. But imaging studies now suggest that GTPS pain comes mostly from injury to the tendons that connect your gluteus medius and gluteus minimus muscles to the top of your femur.

Read on to learn more about how GTPS is treated, including home remedies, medications, and medical options.

Conservative treatment is effective in more than 90% of GTPS cases. Several home remedies and exercises may help speed up recovery.

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Home remedies

You may be able to manage your symptoms at home by:

• applying ice to the injured area for 10 to 15 minutes at a time to reduce inflammation
• applying heat for 15 to 20 minutes at a time to reduce stiffness
• taking over-the-counter pain medications, such as ibuprofen, to relieve pain
• exercising the muscles around your outer hip to strengthen them
• stretching your IT band to relieve tightness
• reducing your current training volume if you’re active (runners may benefit from reducing weekly mileage)
• losing weight to reduce stress on your muscles and skeleton if you have a high body weight and your doctor recommends this

Exercises

Exercise plays an important role in rehabilitation. A physical therapist can help you build a custom workout plan to strengthen weak areas and stretch tight muscles.

• quadriceps strengthening
• IT band stretching with a foam roller
• stretching and strengthening of the hip abductors, the muscles on the outer part of your hips

A 2018 study found that a physical therapy-led education and exercise plan had a 78.6% success rate in treating gluteal tendon pain after 1 year. For comparison, the success rate was 51.9% in people who received no specific treatment.

Strengthening the muscles around the hip through “eccentric exercise” is considered superior to general exercise. Eccentric exercise involves resisting your body weight or an external weight against gravity, such as during the downward portion of a squat.

Here are a few exercise ideas to help strengthen your hips:

• side-lying leg lifts
• clamshell raises
• side-to-side walks with a resistance band
• hip drops