8mo Hip X-Rays. Opinions? - Page 3

Thanks yall for the suggestion, I will be getting her redone and be back with updates.

Here are my girl's repeat x-rays.  She is now 10 months.  Other than positioning being 100x better, what do you think?

The pup shows HD on both image (8 months and 10 months), no matter the positioning. This does not mean she can't have a long working life with the right care. All the best with your girl!

Daniela

Best guess - given the age of the dog, mild to moderate HD unilateral pathology. Subluxation.

Her breeder thinks they look fine. I agree with the other posters, her right hip is subluxed.  I will be curious to see how she prelims.

I found these stats from the OFA website very interesting:

"A recent publication* compared the reliability of the preliminary evaluation hip grade phenotype with the 2 year old evaluation in dogs and there was 100% reliability for a preliminary grade of excellent being normal at 2 years of age (excellent, good, or fair). There was 97.9% reliability for a preliminary grade of good being normal at 2 years of age, and 76.9% reliability for a preliminary grade of fair being normal at 2 years of age. Reliability of preliminary evaluations increased as age at the time of preliminary evaluation increased, regardless of whether dogs received a preliminary evaluation of normal hip conformation or HD. For normal hip conformations, the reliability was 89.6% at 3-6 months, 93.8% at 7-12 months, and 95.2% at 13-18 months. These results suggest that preliminary evaluations of hip joint status in dogs are generally reliable. However, dogs that receive a preliminary evaluation of fair or mild hip joint conformation should be reevaluated at an older age (24 months)."

Her right hip does not have the coverage needed to certify.
I agree with Blitzen.

I do not want to give any good or bad statement here. So far it does not look too great.  With that said I will say that the picture is still executed majorly incorrect. Pelvis is tilted to the left side of the picture in a significant way. That makes the left hand hip look not so good. X ray is improperly developed ( need to have black and white on a x ray) and it is not in focus and on top of it the dog is still  too young and there may be some to the x ray  invisible cartilage which may need  to be more ossified. 
Wait for at least 5 but preferably at least 8  more months and go to different vet. 

 

MFH 27  what *recent  publications* are you referring to?  I am very interested in this.
Here is my experience. 
 As far as reliability of x raying a dog at 3 month being 89.6% I would suggest that we can have successful doubts about such statement. At 3 mo the bones are almost  not ossified at all. That means that at this age instead of the ossified bones you have only cartilage and x ray will not be  stopped by minerals  which are not penetrable by x ray,...since they are not present at this age in sufficient amount. Ossification does take time and is usually quite good at 13 mo and nearly  good at 24 mo and just about 97.5% completed at 36 mo. That is known fact and that is why  most certifications are done at that age.  FYI ossification is depositing of minerals into the bones. 
About 30 years or so  ago I worked  at a kennel where we tried to figure out earliest time to x ray dogs and get decent and reliable results. We were hoping to eliminate sales of dogs with bad hips to minimum and thus stop a lot of heart ache for the new owners of these dogs. . We  conducted a semi scientific study where we x rayed 10 pups at 4, 6 8, 10 mo. In the x rays of the 4 mo old pups  ( Rottweiler) there were just incomplete bones  visible or you could see "ghosts" or  parts of future bones.  Jessen and Spurell [Jessen C.R. and Spurell F.A>Radiographic detection of hip dysplasia of known ages . Proc OFA Symposium and Workshop\\ Oct 19-20 1972 , St Luis Mo, pp.53-61 ( ref 573) ]
showed the OFA - style subjective score at 6 mo(!!!) to be at best 32% reliable when compared with 24 mo evaluation. Neither dogs no procedure has changed , and vets arent using different standards now. .......In some of it's own contemporary statements OFA states reliability of  diagnosis of detection of future HD only 16% at 6 mo of age.  There has been no really good scientific report overturning Jessen& Spurell's 1970-72 scientific finding.  ( Quote form Fred Lanting : Canine Hip dysplasia and other orthopedic disorders. ( Page 73)   )
         Thus from  my experience and scientific study mentioned  above,   I would say that x raying dogs under 8mo for OFA or OFA style evaluation  is waste of time  and money and that many dogs have been  PTS because they,  OMG, had "no hips"....which   is just a bunch of malarkey. 

I'm confused. Why are we xraying this dog so young, period? Is it to decide whether to sell or keep? 

Personally, I don't have a problem with prelims, but rarely are they reliable enough (going by practical experience, not by statistics) to help me make important decisions like whether to keep or sell. Unless they are absolutely horrible or absolutely perfect, I can't make that decision until later, when I see a finished product, with a fully developed skeleton. An 8-10 month old puppy is not a finished product and these hips aren't good enough or bad enough for me to make a decision on. I'd wait and see, if it were my dog. I would tell the owner the same thing if this were a dog I'd bred. The xray isn't good enough to say definitively that even if shown in totally correct symmetry with the right, the left won't  pass.  I'm not saying it would; I'm saying it might, if she were mature and in good condition AND the xray was symmetrical with equal rotation of knees and the pelvis wasn't tilted. If the hips were terrible, we wouldn't be having this debate. 

Prager, the quote is from the OFA website so I dont know what study they are referring to.  I bet if you look at their data for each age individual age range, a 3 month old's xray would not be 89.6%. It would be lower.  By including a range of 3 to 6 months, they are making an xray of a 3 month old look better than the actual data shows.