Huskies football team in Seattle. O'Kane reviews symptoms of and treatment for adolescent hip pain in the cover article of the Oct. 15 issue of American Family Physician . Being slow to act on a child's complaint of groin pain has been the source of guilty feelings for many parents who didn't bring the child in for treatment as promptly as they would have if they had known the potential seriousness of the symptom.
Symptoms can include hip or knee pain or a limp.
When a 'slip' is suspected, the patient should avoid putting any weight on the affected hip and should have X-rays. They can be likened to the mobile blocks or plates that make up the crust of the earth. There is a plate, a piece of bone above, and another plate, or piece of bone, below. The growth plate is in between. During a 'slip', a little bit of the growth plate slips under one end of the bone and a little bit goes under the other.