Abstract
Traumatic dislocation of the hip in children is rare. Large series have shown this injury to be 25 times less common in children than in adults. Only 70 cases of Neglected traumatic dislocation of hip in children has been reported in the English literatures and most of those studies are too small to draw a significant conclusions. We report our experience of treating 20 such cases of neglected traumatic dislocation of hip in children (< 12 years). All had posterior dislocations without any associated fracture. They attended the hospital between 1–52 weeks after injury.Closed reduction under G.A was performed in 12 cases which were less than 3 weeks old while 8 hips(> 3 weeks old) had open reductions following failed reductions with skeletal traction. At 2 years follow-up, a complete range of motion was found in 18 children while the remaining two had 80% of normal hip movement with no significant deformity. All the hips showed varying degree of avascular necrosis, with preservation of joint space on radiographs.
We suggest that attempted closed reduction of under 3 weeks old and open reductions for older dislocations gives satisfactory results. Also an anatomically placed femoral head maintains the stimulus for growth of pelvis and the femur.
Theses abstracts were prepared by Professor Roger Lemaire. Correspondence should be addressed to EFORT Central Office, Freihofstrasse 22, CH-8700 Küsnacht, Switzerland.
