Investigation of hip development in fetus and newborn infant

The right hip joints of forty-seven fresh fetal and newborn infant cadavers were tudied. Vernier callipers in degree of the precision of 0.02 mm was used for measuring the iameter of the femoral head and the depth of the acetabulum, and their ratios were calculated. he results show that although the ratios between the diameter of the femoral head and depth of he acetabulum is decreased at birth, the acetabulum is enough to cover the femoral head. So he ip joint is quite stable. It is sugggested that the relative shallowness of acetabulum do not irectly cause CDH, which easily occurs under cnnditions that there are acetabular dysplasia, ligohydramnios, malposition in utero and after birth, and so on.