Reply to the Letter: ‘Le Scientisme, c'est la Prétention indue au Monopole de vérité, alors que le Propre de la Science c'est de dire: il n'y a pas de Monopole’ (Edgar Morin)

‘Imitation is the Sincerest of Flattery’…Except When It Negatively Impacts Canine and Client Welfare

The central aim of the Vezzoni-modified Badertscher distension device technique is ‘to allow a complete and a correct in-house evaluation of the hip joint by trained clinicians’.[1] The correct quantification of laxity is for that matter of paramount importance, the central aim of this method, and as such, we were quite happy to read that Dr. Smith was not surprised our results were similar with PennHIP.

It is pushing at open doors to state that further studies are necessary to substantiate the claim that veterinarians can perform the in-house evaluation. Therefore, we are happy to report these studies have been finalized. As such, we have recently shown that, after a limited training, veterinarians were both capable of performing the laxity index measurements and the procedure with an intra- and inter-observer agreement similar to published reports on PennHIP and we are eagerly awaiting the publication of these studies.

Finally, if Dr. Smith had asked, we would have informed him that a laxity index database exists at the Ghent University.

The scientific discussion all too often seems to become a personal one[2] [3] [4] [5] when claims towards diagnosing hip laxity are made in scientific literature. Nevertheless, we are confident the professional community is perfectly capable of drawing their own conclusions.

• References

• 1 Broeckx BJG, Vezzoni A, Bogaerts E. , et al. Comparison of three methods to quantify laxity in the canine hip joint. Vet Comp Orthop Traumatol 2018; 31 (01) 23-29
• 2 Smith GK, Gregor TP, Fordyce H. A stress-radiographic method to evaluate dogs for passive hip laxity. Vet Surg 1999; 28 (02) 117-119
• 3 Smith GK, Biery DN, Kapatkin AS. , et al. Question diagnostic technique for hip dysplasia . J Am Vet Med Assoc 2002; 220 (01) 20-21 , author reply 21–22
• 4 Smith GK. Questions conclusions in article on dorsolateral subluxation method. Am J Vet Res 2004; 65 (02) 130
• 5 Smith GK. PennHIP more than “complementary” to FCI hip screening method. J Small Anim Pract 2009; 50 (02) 105-106