In the six-year-period from 1953 to 1959, 262 patients with the congenital dislocation or subluxation of the hips were seen at our outpatient clinic. The routine treatments in these years were to attempt manual reduction and to immobilize the dislocated hip in a frog-leg plaster during three or four months, after which gradual mobilization was allowed.
Based on the analysis of the radiographic and clinical data of these cases, osteochondritis in the congenital dislocation of the hips was examined.
The results are as follows:
1. Thirty percent of the cases showed similar findings to those of Legg-Perthes disease.
2. It was in two cases apparently that immobilization of the normal hips in the frogleg position had caused the vascular damage to the femoral epiphysis.
3. Males and females were equally affected.
4. Occurrence of the osteochondritis increased correlating to the age at the initial treatment.
5. In cases of which the femoral epiphysis had failed to appear before nine months of age, more frequent occurrence of the osteochondritis was revealed.
6. Cases incompletely reduced showed the poor healing tendency of the osteochondritis.