Background Viscosupplementation intraarticular injection with hyaluronic acid (HA) and platelet-rich plasma (PRP) has been shown to improve pain management in osteoarthritis.

Purpose We sought to describe the impact on analgesic consumption and VAS score after a a single viscosupplementation intraarticular injection in patients with hip osteoarthritis.

Material and methods Randomised controlled trial to compare the clinical efficacy and safety of a single ultrasound-guided intraarticular injection with autologous PRP versus HA in hip osteoarthritis was performed with a 1 year follow-up (four visits: baseline, 1, 4, 24, 48 weeks). Variables studied included the reduction in: VAS score, analgesic drugs’ consumption in doses (defined as total daily-defined-doses and type categorised according to OMS scale: type I, II and III for opioids.

Results A total of 74 patiens were randomly assigned to two groups and received one single injection, PRP (38 patients), AH (36 patients). Table 1 shows reduction in analgesic drugs’ consumption per group of treatment.

Within the first month, a significant reduction was shown in VAS score for both treatment arms in respect to last visit: 4 (2–6) vs. 7 (5–8) in PRP and 4.5 (2–7) vs. 7 (5–8) in HA; p<0.01. The 42.8% and 35.7% improvement in the PRP and HA groups, respectively, decrease to 28.5% in visit 3 for both arms. Pain management decrease although safer a year of Follow-up baseline levels were not achieved and only 3/74 (4%) patients decided to go for surgery during the follow-up period. No adverse events were observed in any of the treatment groups.

Conclusion Viscosupplementation with a single intraarticular injection with HA and PRP seem to be a safe and effective treatment option in improving pain management in hip osteoarthritis, ensuring a delay in surgery. Although the PRP cohort presented better profiles, no significant differences were found with the HA cohort.

References and/or acknowledgements None.

No conflict of interest.