CARRYING ANGLE OF ELBOW IN INDIAN CHILDREN - WHAT IS THE NORM?

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Knowledge of normal value of carrying angle is important while managing injuries around elbow. However there is paucity of literature documenting carrying angle in Indian children. Inuence of various factors like age, sex, height, weight on carrying angle is still debated. With this study we tried to bridge this gap in knowledge. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted cross sectional study of 1893 children in the age group of 3 to 15 years. Student having history of previous fractures, orthopaedic deformities, neurological conditions were excluded. To assess the effect of the age, the patients were separated into ve cohorts: 3 to 5, 5 to 7, 7 to 9, 9 to 11, 11 to 13 and 13 to 15. The carrying angle of elbow was measured using universal standard extendable goniometer. To avoid interobserver variability, all measurements were recorded by a single orthopaedic surgeon with 5 years postgraduate experience. RESULT: Carrying angle was more in females 9.67 (SD 3.16) compared to males 8.33 (SD 2.63). . We observed increasing value of carrying angle with age. Pearson correlation coefcient showed carrying angle had positive correlation with age (r= 0.5, P< 0.001), height(r= 0.5, P< 0.001). However BMI Z score, which is weight adjusted for age and sex did not show any correlation with carrying angle and no signicant difference was noted between carrying angle on right and left side. DISCUSSION: Finding of our study differed with available literature in respect to lower value of carrying angle in both males and females. We did not found changes in carrying angle on left or right side in contrast to previous studies showing larger carrying angle in dominant side. Further studies with larger sample size are required in this aspect.