Mayo Clinic Health Manager
Get free personalized health guidance for you and your family.
Get Started
About our e-newsletters
- Free e-newsletters
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- We do not share your e-mail address
Housecall, our weekly general-interest e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on a wide variety of health topics with timely, reliable, practical information, recipes, blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts and more. Our biweekly topic-specific e-newsletters also include blogs, questions and answers with Mayo Clinic experts, and other useful information that will help you manage your health.
Housecall Archives
Mayo Clinic Housecall
Stay up to date on the latest health information.
What you get
- Free weekly e-newsletter
- Mayo Clinic expertise
- Recipes, tools and other helpful information
- We do not share your e-mail address
Tests and diagnosis
By Mayo Clinic staffTo determine what's causing your pain, your doctor will ask about your medical history and your current signs and symptoms. He or she will likely want to know what actions increase your pain and what relieves it.
In order to diagnose avascular necrosis, your doctor may request images be taken to get a closer look at your bones. Common tests for avascular necrosis include:
- X-rays. X-rays usually appear normal in people who have early-stage avascular necrosis. Later stages may be more evident on an X-ray.
- Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). MRI scans can show early changes in the bone that may indicate avascular necrosis.
Depending on your signs and symptoms, your doctor may use other tests to diagnose avascular necrosis. In rare cases, your doctor may surgically remove a small piece of bone (biopsy) for laboratory examination.
