Nursery World - A Unique Child: Health - A Doctor's Diary ... a Limp

Recently, during a busy Monday clinic, a mother brought her son in to see me. He had recently suffered a cold and for the last 24 hours had been more clingy and been limping on his left leg.

A child with a limp is an important field of medicine, purely because of the potential consequences of missing a serious condition. Of course, most cases, such as a minor injury or a splinter in the foot, are not dangerous, but one cannot afford to be complacent.

Many children will have been born with an obvious cause for their limp - for example, spinal deformity or discrepancy between the length of their legs. Others will have been found to have muscular diseases that can cause leg weakness and limp.

Very young children may be born with hips that are dislocated or easily dislocatable. Developmental dysplasia of the hip (DDH) may affect around one in 200 babies when they are born, although four out of five cases resolve by three weeks of age. The condition often runs in families and affects females more than males.

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