Ischiofemoral impingement: a retrospective analysis of cases in a specialist orthopaedic centre over a four-year period.

Background: Ischiofemoral impingement is a recently identified cause of chronic hip pain, the pathophysiology and clinical features of which are poorly understood.


Aim: To determine the clinical significance of MRI findings of ischiofemoral impingement.


Materials And Methods: Retrospective search for cases of ischiofemoral impingement in the Nuffield Orthopaedic Centre, Oxford, over a 4 year period, and review of medical notes to identify correlation between clinical and MRI features.

Case report: imaging and surgical treatment of a snapping hip due to ischiofemoral impingement.

An association between hip pain and quadratus femoris MRI abnormality with concurrent narrowing of the ischiofemoral space has been reported in a number of patients to date, raising the possibility that the muscular damage observed is due to ischiofemoral impingement. Possible impingement has been noted primarily in middle-aged females either with or without a history of trauma or surgery, and associated snapping of the hip is a rarely described feature. We report here on a 17-year-old girl who presented with post-traumatic hip pain; she later developed evidence of ischiofemoral narrowing and quadratus femoris edema on MRI in addition to an audible snapping.