The Pediatric and Adolescent Hip: Essentials and Evidence.

This important new textbook describing the pediatric and adolescent hip is a long-awaited contribution to the orthopedic literature. There have been several less comprehensive attempts at producing such a text over the last 30 years, but this would appear to be the first that addresses all childhood and adolescent hip conditions in a comprehensive manner, including femoroacetabular impingement. The authors/editors are a distinguished group with both a North American and international viewpoint. Alshryda works in the Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital, Manchester University in the United Kingdom, while Huntley and Howard work at Sidra-Weill Cornell Medicine —Qatar (with Howard joining the DuPont Institute staff—Wilmington in mid-2019). Finally, Schoenecker is from Vanderbilt University (Nashville). Although remarkably international, the editors have had much of their education in the major children’s orthopedic training centers of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, or Australia, bringing a broad and contemporary tone to the text. The forward, by John Wedge (Toronto), nicely outlines the importance of this text and lauds its comprehensive nature. The extensive author list includes luminaries from throughout North America and the world, all who are considered experts in the field of children’s orthopedics. The topic of femoroacetabular impingement and other relatively new topics are well represented. The book is divided into 10 parts (38 chapters) with a very broad range of topics beginning with “Foundational Aspects” which includes history, anatomy, and biomechanics. This is followed by a magnificent treatise on developmental dysplasia of the hip, with part 3 devoted to Perthes disease, slipped capital femoral epiphyses, and hip impingement. The sections on infection are excellent and include a chapter on tuberculosis of the hip. Trauma is covered only as it relates to proximal femoral and pelvic injuries. Neuromuscular hip conditions are well presented in 6 separate chapters in part 7. The excellent CP section reflects the life work of Kerr Graham and his Melbourne trainees. The needed chapters on syndromes and skeletal dysplasias as well as tumors and then miscellaneous hip conditions, such as bladder exstrophy and proximal femoral focal deficiency, round out the comprehensive index. The book’s well designed “educational layout” includes many attractive features. The editors have chosen to use so-called macro quotes (or “insets”) within each chapter, printed in a different color so that one can quickly browse the headlines or keynotes from each chapter. Each chapter closes in an extremely educational manner, with sections labeled “Classic Papers,” “Key Evidence,” and “Take HomeMessages” preceding the traditional reference list. The generally excellent reference lists range from those of modest length to a list of 391 publications ending the comprehensive developmental dysplasia of the hip chapter authored by Weinstein and colleagues of Iowa. The image quality is generally excellent, and most chapters can be described as well illustrated. One of the editors (Schoenecker) has a strong interest in digital illustration and apparently offered his technique to all authors. This provides a degree of standardization for many black-andwhite line drawings that have been converted to full color. This adds some uniformity to the text but not all authors utilized this approach. This digital drawing/color overlay technique can be very useful in most cases; however, in a few circumstances in this text, the color palette range and depth obscure some details of the drawing. This textbook is a timely and important contribution to the orthopedic literature on children’s and adolescent hip disorders and the editors can be proud with the results of their massive effort to accumulate and organize current information on this key subspecialty. As such, it will be required reading in all orthopedic departments throughout the world, and every children’s orthopedic surgeon will want to have his own copy.