Hip problems: shortage of doctors partly to blame

THE number of late diagnoses of developmentally displaced hips in young children is on the increase and a shortage of community health doctors is partly to blame.

Dr Bridin Cannon, a public health doctor in Cork, said there was also a growth in the number of baby boys given a late diagnosis of undescended testes. This could lead to malignancy and damage fertility prospects, Dr Cannon said.

Addressing members of the Irish Medical Organisation (IMO), Dr Cannon said dyplastic or displaced hips should ideally be picked up in newborns but sometimes the condition developed at a later stage. For this reason it is no longer called congenital hip displacement, she said.