Hip x-ray

2652 Views 10 Replies 4 Participants Last post by sassafras, Jul 19, 2012

Targhee

Discussion Starter · Jul 19, 2012

I wanted to post this x-ray to get a few different perspectives. I've posted a few other threads about my year old pup who has been diagnosed with hip dysplasia. The vet had mentioned she is too young to show signs of HD.

How do these x-rays look to you?

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sassafras

· #2 · Jul 19, 2012

Actually I don't think those hips look too bad. Generally you want about 50% of the femoral head (ball) covered by the acetabulum ("socket") and it looks to be pretty close to that. There is a slight gap between the femoral head and acetabulum at around the 9-10 o'clock position on the hip on our right that isn't ideal, but isn't excessive, either. Generally you want to see those surfaces nice and uniformly tight, and smooth - but again, I'm looking for faults so I might be overinterpreting. And she looks to be reasonably muscled in her thighs on the radiograph - does she have muscly thighs?

I didn't see your other posts, is she actually limping or is this something that was found incidentally? You should be able to have these radiographs reviewed by a radiologist and/or orthopedist if you're not sure of the diagnosis.

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sassafras

· #4 · Jul 19, 2012

An orthopedist was pushing for surgery on THOSE hips?

It's possible that all of her good muscling is helping stabilize and squeeze what might otherwise be iffy hips. If you keep her at a good weight and very athletic her whole life, I bet she'll have few if any problems as she ages.

As an aside, this is part of why I am so maniacal about young dogs getting good exercise as youngsters to help build up those thigh muscles. Happy thighs help make happy hips.

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sassafras

· #6 · Jul 19, 2012

Keechak said:
I CERTAINLY wouldn't get those hips replaced!

Yea those are not surgical hips IMO.

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sassafras

· #9 · Jul 19, 2012

Targhee said:
The vet mentioned because she is so young (1 year) her hips still look good on x-ray. I guess it was the joint laxity he was basing it off of?

Probably. There are two ways hips can "look good" on an x-ray. One is structurally/the appearance of the joint - which, I think your dogs' hips look pretty good. Now, an x-ray is just a moment in time, so there can be factors that might affect precisely how good/bad hips look on any specific x-ray, but in general the joint itself is not going to transform completely from fantastic to horrible from x-ray to x-ray. Keep in mind a couple of things, too - one, correct positioning of hip x-rays is designed to make the hips look as "bad" as possible to look for subtle dysplasia, and two, that a dog under sedation is incredibly relaxed and often you can get some joint laxity in a dog who is simply very flexible even if there isn't HD present.

The other way hips can look good is whether there is degenerative joint disease (DJD) or arthritic changes visible in the hips (the terms are often used interchangeably). That is something that will change over time and I'm guessing that's what your vet was talking about because there is no hint of it in your dog's x-rays.

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sassafras

· #11 · Jul 19, 2012

Targhee said:
I've always thought her to be quite flexible, ha. I wonder if you could get a false positive result for something like that in the palpation/Ortolani test since she was sedated? Hmm probably not, but interesting to think about.

No you're right - it's completely possible for that to happen.

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