The proposed international terminology for the classification of congenital limb deficiencies.

During the past twenty years the treatment of children with limb deficiencies has emerged as a recognizable subspecialty in both medicine and prosthetics. These children can be divided into two broad categories—those whose amputations are acquired as the result of trauma or disease; and those who are born with a limb defect or anomaly. With the first group, classification of the presenting condition usually poses little difficulty either nationally or internationally as the terms used are common throughout the world. For example, a partial limb loss described as a shortbelow-elbow stump in English would be reported as a kurzer Unterarmstumpf in German, and the translation is straightforward. However, in the case of congenital deficits or anomalies, the situation has been quite the reverse in that dif­ ferent systems of nomenclature are used in dif­ ferent parts of the world. In some cases there are even different systems in use within the same country.