When buying a pair of pants, who does not have to take one more piece from the bottom of one leg than the other? To what extent is it normal and at what point does it become a pathology to have one leg shorter than the other? The fact is that one out of every ten people has one leg longer than the other without being something pathological.
“There is also no clear cause, they tend to be small differences, less than one centimeter, and the vast majority do not have repercussions, the body perfectly compensates them.
As indicated, the human body is symmetrical, but not 100%. “You have to act when you notice that this difference in length between one leg or another has a clinical impact, it can be detected, for example, by adjusting the clothes and taking the bottom of a pair of trousers, or in a medical review when analyzing the hip of the leg. child, you can see if you have one hip higher than the other, if you have less than one centimeter and it has no clinical impact, it does not affect you, you do not have to do anything “, adds the expert.
Doctors believe that less than one centimeter is “strange” that the length difference of the leg has repercussions, for example in a deviation of the spine, which causes a scoliotic attitude. Although these causes are generally unknown, he says that dysmetria can also occur due to trauma or infections, for example.
Measurements
On the measures to start when the difference in length between one leg and another is remarkable, greater than one centimeter, the traumatologist sees fit to compensate up to two or three centimeters with a boost or template.
“From two or three centimeters you usually have to do surgical treatment, which also varies, up to approximately five centimeters, which is control of growth, a technique for guided growth. The growth of the longest leg with plates or staples, either of the femur or of the tibia or of both, until on the other side it is equalized “, the specialist specifies.
Likewise, the head of Traumatology Hospital San Pedro de Logroño argues that this surgical intervention is indicated in the last years of growth of the child, with the aim that the minimum difference that remains does not cause it again a dysmetria. As it indicates, the growth of the bones takes place in the plates of growth in the ends of the long bones. One of the most used techniques is the ‘ epiphysiodesis ‘, which consists of scraping or drilling the growth plate at the end of the bone of the longest leg to stop the growth of said plate.
On the other hand, it states that, in ‘short leg’ greater than five centimeters, what must be done is to lengthen the shorter leg, not stop it, through braces and nails inside the femur. This is usually the most frequent, or also in the tibia; or with external fixators with which a wheel is turned, and it is lengthening every day a millimeter until achieving the desired length. You can extend a leg more than 10 centimeters.
“In general, some differences are normal differences, there are no alarms in small differences, and many are diagnosed as adults when doing an X-ray or control of another pathology, in which it is seen that there is that difference in length. exist dismetrías in the arms “, says the traumatologist.
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