The Little Book of Skeletal Dysplasias

This book is not designed to make you an expert on dysplasias. Our goal instead is to give you enough information to help you say something sensible and (hopefully) useful about the dysplasia cases you interpret.

This book is written by two radiologists with wildly different practices: a pediatric radiologist and a musculoskeletal radiologist who primarily sees adult patients. Hopefully your own practice will fall somewhere between these two endpoints.

Part 1 of the book assumes that the reader is not a pediatric radiologist, and that many of the dysplastic bones one sees are actually acquired malformations due to some other, more familiar disease process. This chapter acknowledges that a number of children with congenital dysplasias grow up to become adults with congenital dysplasias, and presents short vignettes of the most commonly seen entities.

Part 2 of the book briefly describes the most commonly seen skeletal dysplasias that confront the pediatric radiologist.

Part 3 of the book (the skeletal gallery) is the most unique part, and in our opinion, the coolest. Therein we present complete interactive skeletons from three normal children (age 5 weeks, 2 years and 9 years) and from 13 children with selected dysplasias. This gallery allows one to quickly compare any combination of these 16 skeletons.