Hip joint, this is the medical name. We, the people, commonly call it “hip bone”. Hip pain is common among middle-aged and elderly people. It consists of two bony structures, the femoral head and acetabulum, and soft tissue structures such as cartilage, glenoid labrum, round ligament and joint capsule, and is surrounded by many muscles, tendons, nerves and blood vessels. Problems with the hip joint and the surrounding tissues may manifest as pain and discomfort around the hip joint and activity disorders. Common diseases include femoral head necrosis, hip impingement, hip glenoid labral injury, hip osteoarthritis, congenital hip dysplasia, synovial disease, and many others. The first thing that comes to mind when it comes to hip pain is femoral head necrosis. Ischemic necrosis of the femoral head is a common disease caused by damage or interruption of the blood supply to the femoral head, resulting in the death of bone cells and bone marrow components, followed by collapse of the femoral head, hip pain and dysfunction. When you hear the words “bad” and “dead”, patients with hip pain are worried about whether they have this disease. How do you know if your hip pain is necrosis of the femoral head? First, let’s see if you are one of these three groups of people: 1, adult men who have been drinking alcohol for a long time (more than 1-2 taels per day on average); 2, patients with medical diseases such as lupus erythematosus syndrome and kidney disease who need to take hormonal drugs for a long time, or patients who have taken Chinese medicine of unknown composition; 3, patients who have had traumatic injuries such as posterior dislocation of the hip joint and fracture of the femoral neck. If you have the above conditions, it is recommended that you seek medical attention as soon as possible after the occurrence of hip pain, and the possibility of femoral head necrosis is higher. However, if you do not have these three conditions, you can basically rest assured, because the probability of femoral head necrosis in the general population is very low. To rule out femoral head necrosis, orthogonal pelvic and lateral hip x-rays and MRI of the hip joint are needed, while CT+3D reconstruction of the hip joint helps to assess whether the femoral head is collapsed. Of course, these are also routine tests for patients with general hip pain. Once femoral head necrosis is diagnosed, it is important to avoid weight bearing as much as possible, that is to say, to walk in bed or on crutches as much as possible, because weight bearing will speed up the process of femoral head necrosis, which will easily cause collapse, and it is recommended to operate as soon as possible. Usually the necrosis progresses rapidly, and timely surgical intervention in early to mid-stage femoral head necrosis can prevent collapse and preserve the hip joint of the patient, while once the femoral head necrosis has progressed to an advanced stage, the normal function of the joint can only be restored through hip replacement surgery.