Greater trochanteric pain syndrome: defining the clinical syndrome

Background Effective treatment of hip pain improves population health and quality of life. Accurate differential diagnosis is fundamental to effective treatment. The diagnostic criteria for one common hip problem, greater trochanteric pain syndrome (GTPS) have not been well defined. Purpose To define the clinical presentation of GTPS. Methods Forty-one people with GTPS, 20 with hip osteoarthritis (OA), and 23 age-matched and sexmatched asymptomatic participants (ASC) were recruited. Inclusion and exclusion criteria ensured mutually exclusive groups. Assessment: the Harris hip score (HHS), a battery of clinical tests, and single leg stance (SLS). Participants identified the site of reproduced pain. Analysis: Fisher’s exact test, analysis of variance (ANOVA) informed recursive partitioning to develop two classification trees. Results Maximum walking distance and the ability to manipulate shoes and socks were the only HHS domains to differentiate GTPS from OA (ANOVA: p=0.010 and