Legg-Calve-Perthes disease (here called “Perthes disease”), defined as osteonecrosis of the juvenile hip (Chaundhry, Phillips, Feldman), is a common hip disease affecting school age children. Another name for Perthes disease ischemic necrosis of the hip is a condition that happens when their the femoral head losses blood loss temporary. This disease occurs usually in boys the age of between 4-8 years. The case of this disease is 1 in 1200 children. (Hart,Grottkau e al) .
History of perthes disease? In 1909, Johan Henning Waldenström observed 10 cases of what is now called the Perthes disease, incorrectly assuming that the disease was related to tuberculosis,(Mehlman, McCourt), however, the disease got its name from the three doctors ,American Arthur Legg, Frenchman Jacques Calve, and German Georg Perthes ,who, in 1910, all used the newly discovered roentgen radiography technology to examine cases of Perthes disease (Chaundhry, Phillips, Feldman). Calve, whose cases …show more content…
Currently, Perthes is divided into 4 stages: 1st, the “initial phase” (lasting a few months to a year), usually caused by a vascular insult but exacerbated by heredity, nutrition, inflammation, etc., is when blood supply to the femoral head and hip joint is stopped, the hip joint becomes “inflamed, stiff and painful”, and portions of the bone turn into dead tissue. 2nd, the fragmentation phase (lasting 1-3 years), when the body starts replacing these dead bone cells with new bone cells, but the joint remains inflamed and painful. 3rd, the reossification phase (lasting 1-3 years), when these new bone cells mold themselves into the round shape of the femoral head, and 4th (lasting several years), the healing phase, where normal cells replace these newly formed bone cells