Injections into the hip joint are usually performed under local anaesthetic using x-ray guidance or sometimes ultrasound guidance to accurately position the needle in the hip joint. These injections can be used to help to diagnose the hip as the source of pain (diagnostic injection to arthritic hip) or can be used to help relieve hip pain (therapeutic hip injection). Diagnostic hip injection involve the injection of a long acting local anaesthetic. Therapeutic injections usually involve the injection of a viscosupplementation agent that aims to help relieve some of the pain of arthritis. Steroids can also be used to do this, but we only perform steroid injections into arthritic joints in rare cases, as such steroid injections can increase the risk of infection of any subsequent joint replacement.