Examining delays in diagnosis for slipped capital femoral epiphysis from a health disparities perspective.

Slipped Capital Femoral Epiphysis (SCFE) is a skeletal pathology affecting adolescents which requires timely surgery to prevent progression. Delays in diagnosis and treatment of SCFE can negatively affect patient prognosis, and few studies have examined how health disparities and barriers to care may influence these delays. In particular, only a handful of studies have included a Hispanic patient sample, despite this ethnic group's increased risk for the disease and unique barriers to care. A retrospective chart review was conducted for 124 patients surgically treated for idiopathic SCFE from January 2010 to September 2017. Patient data included age, facility and date of diagnosis, sex, BMI, race and ethnicity, Southwick slip angle, and insurance type. Results indicated that patients with private insurance were more likely to present with a mild slip than patients who were insured by Medicaid or uninsured, while patients without insurance were more likely to have severe slips. Patients without insurance also had a significantly higher mean slip than patients with insurance. The relationship between insurance status and slip angle degree was significant independent of race, even though Hispanic individuals were significantly more likely to have Medicaid or be uninsured. All patients without insurance, and a majority of those with Medicaid, were diagnosed in the emergency department. Time to diagnosis and slip angle were positively correlated, which suggests that longer delays led to increase of the slip angle, consistent with previous findings. Time to diagnosis and BMI were also correlated, which may be tied to socioeconomic factors, but the possibility of weight bias should not be dismissed. These results suggest that socioeconomic status and other factors may have contributed to barriers to care which led to delays in diagnosis and thus more severe slips. Future SCFE research should include health disparities variables to better inform treatment and prognosis.

Acetabular retroversion in Down syndrome.

BACKGROUND: The management of the unstable Down syndrome hip is challenging, and there is controversy about the anatomic factors that may contribute to the instability. It has been our observation that children with Down syndrome often have a deficient posterior acetabular wall. This is different from other congenital acetabular dysplasia where the anatomic deficiency is typically anterolateral. These observations suggest that the acetabulum in Down syndrome hip dysplasia may be relatively retroverted. The purpose of this study was to determine the acetabular version in children with Down syndrome and compare this with matched controls from both normal and developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH) populations. METHODS: A cohort of Down patients treated surgically for acetabular dysplasia and/or hip instability was matched by age, sex, and side to a group of normal controls and compared with a cohort of patients who had undergone periacetabular osteotomy for DDH. For all patients, preoperative computed tomography scans were used to measure acetabular version through the joint center. Statistical differences were determined using analysis of variance with α=0.05. RESULTS: We identified 16 subjects in each cohort. The average acetabular version in the normal control group was 13±5 degrees and in the DDH cohort was 21±7 degrees. In contrast, the mean version in the group of patients with Down syndrome was 2±11 degrees, indicating increased acetabular retroversion; this result was significantly different from both the normal group (P=0.02) and those with DDH (P<0.001). According to the criteria described by Tönnis for computed tomography measured retroversion, 10/16 patients with Down syndrome were severely retroverted compared with only 3/16 normal controls and 1/16 patients with DDH (P=0.002). CONCLUSIONS: Patients with Down syndrome and hip instability seem to have more retroverted acetabula than normal controls and patients with DDH. In patients with Trisomy 21, axial imaging should be performed to evaluate acetabular version when planning the optimal corrective osteotomy for instability and/or acetabular deficiency. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE: Level III (prognostic, retrospective case-control).