A further anatomical check on the accuracy of intra-articular hip injections in relation to the therapy of coxarthritis.

In an attempt to test the accuracy of the intra-articular injection treatment of coxarthritis, as used by Waugh (1945), Crowe (1944), and many other investigators; hip-joints of 33 cadavers were injected (Dobson, 1948) with dye solution which jellified on cooling. The technique of injection was similar to that applied in living patients undergoing treatment for osteo-arthritis of the hip. In 1947 at a Heberden Society meeting, D. P. Nicholson remarked on the difficulty of the procedure of injection into the arthritic hip-joint. He reported that in a series of 23 hip-joints radiographed after the intra-articular injection of diodone (an opaque dye) only one x-ray film confirmed the appearance of the dye in the joint injected (Nicholson, 1948). It seemed that it might be of interest to record the results of a second series of forty hip-joints injected with the dye solution in the cadaver. Not only would an independent control be made on the original experiment, but a comparison could be made between the relative efficacy of the anterior and the lateral approach to the hip-joint. Material In my second series of experiments on intra-articular injections in the cadaver, nearly all the bodies used were of good physique and weight, and were injected within a day or two of reception in the Anatomy Department. Thus a similar varied resilience of each tissue-substance penetrated by the needle was experienced, as in the living osteo-arthritic patient.