[Acetabuloplasty]

Lateral acetabular osteotomy in comparison to three-dimensional osteotomies of the pelvis in hip dysplasia is a simple technical procedure. Contraindications are an age over 8 years and an irreducible femoral head. For a long time we have used xenogenic deproteinized bone wedges from animals. We now use autoclaved and deep-frozen wedges from allogenic femoral heads. The wedges are sterilized at 121 degrees C for 20 min and then kept deep-frozen in the bone bank. Our results in 109 patients show that this method is very successful; even extreme angles of acetabular index correction are possible with this technique. It is unfortunate that the lateral acetabuloplasty with autoclaved allogenic bone graft is not used frequently and we recommend that this method be installed at all paediatric orthopaedic hospitals.