For patient with hip arthritis you definitely want to try conservative measures before even considering surgery. Typically these include activity modification, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs such as Advil, Aleve, ibuprofen, joint injections into the hip joint and physical therapy. Weight loss is often times helpful in alleviating some of the pain of hip arthritis, because any loss in weight that's not going through your joint when you go up and downstairs. Losing weight won't reverse any of the changes of arthritis, but may be able to slow some of the effects. Surprisingly physical therapy is primarily used for maintaining your strength as you have hip arthritis there actually haven't been any studies that have shown that physical therapy limits the progression of arthritis or delays the need for surgery. If one should have hip replacement surgery; in most cases, no physical therapy is required unless you are having trouble resuming a normal walk.
