Calvé's 1910 case series describes 10 children with a distinct non-tuberculous hip arthritis. He defined its clinical and radiographic features: coxa vara, femoral head hypertrophy, and fragmentation of the epiphyseal center. The paper asks whether this entity, previously mistaken for hip tuberculosis, is a separate disease.
When a young child presents with a limp, knee pain, and limited hip abduction, the reflexive historical diagnosis was hip tuberculosis. Calvé's contribution was showing that a subset of these children had something entirely different. The decision rule he established still holds: preserved joint space and an intact Shenton's line point away from infection and toward an epiphyseal disorder.
This paper is one of the original descriptions of what became Legg-Calvé-Perthes disease, published the same year as Legg's and Perthes' accounts. For boards, anchor on the pattern: fragmentation of the femoral ossific nucleus with a normal joint space, followed by reossification, in a child aged 4 to 10.
Remember that referred knee pain and a Trendelenburg gait are classic, and that hip pathology must always be excluded in a child complaining of knee pain.
Calvé's 1910 case series describes 10 children with a distinct non-tuberculous hip arthritis. He defined its clinical and radiographic features: coxa vara, femoral head hypertrophy, and fragmentation of the epiphyseal center. The paper asks whether this entity, previously mistaken for hip tuberculosis, is a separate disease.
When a young child presents with a limp, knee pain, and limited hip abduction, the reflexive historical diagnosis was hip tuberculosis. Calvé's contribution was showing that a subset of these children had something entirely different. The decision rule he established still holds: preserved joint space and an intact Shenton's line point away from infection and toward an epiphyseal disorder.
This paper is one of the original descriptions of what became Legg-Calvé-Perthes disease, published the same year as Legg's and Perthes' accounts. For boards, anchor on the pattern: fragmentation of the femoral ossific nucleus with a normal joint space, followed by reossification, in a child aged 4 to 10.
Remember that referred knee pain and a Trendelenburg gait are classic, and that hip pathology must always be excluded in a child complaining of knee pain.