Patients Perspective: Congenital Hip Dysplasia

C: I’m Caitlin Walker.

D: And I’m David Walker. And, uh, we have two kids, Mikey and Ellie, and Ellie was diagnosed with hip dysplasia.

The diagnosis happened pretty early on. It was one of those situations where, uh, Caitlin noticed something, uh, going on with like a ‘click,’ -

C: Literally about thirty minutes after she was born. And they gave her to me, uh, I could hear the ‘click.’ When we heard the click, it was right away that she saw a doctor, uh, because as soon as I had notified the nurse, while she was - while I was holding her and I could hear the click, I had told the nurse in the delivery room. So she got the in-house pediatrician to come over to our room.

The first pediatrician did not notice anything. Another pediatrician came up to the room, and then she checked out Ellie and confirmed that there was a click.

D: The only reason that we, uh, were really concerned about the click to begin with was because our son, he had a hip dysplasia, but not as severely.

C: After the in-house pediatrician looked at her, it had been about a day before she saw her primary pediatrician. Um, and then from there, it was about four days until she saw the specialist, um, at the children’s hospital. Then they ultimately confirmed with the ultrasound.

Um, I wasn’t really sure of the extent of what it was going to be; since our son had a very mild case of that, he didn’t need a harness or anything.

Once I found out she needed to get a harness, my perspective on the thing sort of changed a little bit. So she had to wear the harness for about six weeks. She had to wear that harness full time, twenty-four-seven.

Initially, we didn’t put a shirt underneath her harness, because they put some padding underneath the harness and told us that was going to be enough, that she would be fine. But it was really about two days after she had the harness when we started to notice the chafing and the redness. So we ended up putting a shirt underneath her harness, which helped.

Some of the benefits of the harness, though, were that she ended up fine, so after the six weeks she didn’t need to wear a brace, it’s not affecting her long-term. So even though it was six weeks - her first six weeks, which were tough - she doesn’t have to worry about that any more.

So it definitely change dup a lot of routines, bath times were different -

D: Right.

C: Um, changing her diaper was a lot more complicated.

So the big thing that was helpful: the doctor was able to show us the ultrasound and show us what the hip looked like. She showed us the normal hip - so the other side, which was normal for her, so the right side - and then showed us the left side, which was not normal. Being able to look at that, have her show us, “Well, here’s what a normal one looks like on the ultrasound and then here’s what the abnormal one looks like on the ultrasound,” that was very helpful.

D: She also mentioned what could happen if it was - if it went untreated. Their gait changes, and it’s very noticeable, and they can’t do things like participate in sports, as they get older. So, at first, there’s no visible effect to it.