Objectivity/Subjectivity of OFA- Xray opinions/diagnosis - Page 2

Interesting.  This is also why I Pennhip all my dogs as well as OFA.

I looked into Pennhip and frankly, their technique scares me. I don't trust most vets to do that to any dog, let alone a young one as they often do w/GSDs. I like the objectivity of it, though. I would just really really have to trust the vet.

With the remodeling I would expect Moderate HD from the OFA.  But then I'm still trying to understand them myself. 

Did you call OFA?  Was it a split decision or was it unanimous?

How do you define subjective and objecive?

They allow you to resend up to three times.  They have a very large number of radiologists that they send them out to.  Most likely you would get a different panel of three.

They can only deal with what they are sent.  They are not supposed to "imagine"  what it would look like if it was a good positioning and no pano.  Send them a good positioning after the pano is gone.

If they were so "random", then why are their results so consistent?  The following is a cut and paste from the website's FAQs:

"Since the hip and elbow evaluations are subjective, what level of consistency is there between the radiologists?
When results of 1.8 million radiographic evaluations by 45 radiologists were analyzed, it was found that all three radiologists agreed as to whether the dog should be classified as having a normal phenotype, borderline phenotype, or HD 94.9% of the time. In addition, 73.5% of the time, all three radiologists agreed on the same hip phenotype (excellent, fair, good, borderline, mild, moderate or severe). Twenty-one percent of the time, two radiologists agreed on the same hip grade and the third radiologist was within one hip grade of the other two. Two radiologists agreed on the same hip grade and the third radiologist was within two hip grades of the other two 5.4% of the time. This percentage of agreement is high considering the subjective nature of the evaluation."

On a personal note, I have had 2 dogs who were a split decision beween OFA good and fair.  I can resend them if I like.

I used PennHip in 1994 and it was a disaster for my dog.  I would never do it again, He had the procedure done twice for reasons that I do not understand.  The first result was top 10% of Shepherds.  The second time it was the bottom 10%.   I did not know at the time that the "practitioner" had a weekend watching videos and lectures before he spread apart my dogs hips with his metal "distractor" till it came out of the joint and seriously injured him. The xray was so over exposed you could barely see the bubbles.   He could not sit for a week and was seriously limping.  Fortunately, he recovered and got his OFA certificate.  He lived months past his 13th birthday and was sound.

Michele