A compartment syndrome is an orthopaedic emergency which can result from a variety of causes, the most common being trauma. Rarely, it can develop spontaneously and several aetiologies for spontaneous compartment syndrome have been described. We describe a patient with diabetes who developed a spontaneous compartment syndrome. The diagnosis was delayed because of the atypical presentation.
We analysed the short-term outcome after varus osteotomy for Perthes’ disease in 48 older children from south-west India, comparing them with 30 historical controls. The children were between 7 and 12 years of age at the onset of the disease. All had stage-I or stage-II disease, with half or more of the epiphysis involved. The operated children had an open-wedge subtrochanteric varus osteotomy with derotation or extension and a trochanteric epiphyseodesis. Weight-bearing was avoided until late stage III. The non-operated children had been treated symptomatically by conservative methods. At the time of healing, 62.5% of the operated group had spherical femoral heads compared with 20% of those treated non-operatively (p <
0.001). Of the operated children with Catterall group-IV involvement, 48% had good results as against 24% of the non-operated group (p <
0.05). The percentage increase in the radius of the affected femoral head compared with the normal side was significantly lower in children who had operations (14.68 We have shown that the short-term results of early surgical containment in children over seven years of age are satisfactory.
