A Study on the Evaluation of the Symmetry of Pelvic Radiographs in Dogs

Abstract

Pelvic radiographs in dogs have been used for assessments of pelvic bone, hip joint and sacral bone in orthopedic examination. The precise positioning that is evaluated objectively and subjectively is important in these assessments. Therefore, this retrospective study was performed to compare the objective and subjective evaluation methods for symmetry of pelvic radiographs in dog. For this aim, 100 pelvic radiographs were reevaluated by linear, area and circumference measurements. All examined variables were statistically different between two sides. As expected, the differences in percentages were remarkable for width and area values for both ilium and obturator foramen between left and right sides. However, the degree of asymmetry was unexpectedly high between the sides. In terms of the difference in the percentage of ilial wing width, two third of radiographs showed asymmetry up to 20% and higher in the remaining one third of radiographs: specifically, from 30.27% to 41.88% in 13% of the radiographs. It was also determined that the examined variables were affected differently from asymmetric position. The results of this study clearly show that a methodological study is needed to determine the correlation between the degrees of asymmetry and pelvic measurements that are used in diagnosis of some orthopedic diseases.