Narrow-base baby carrier yielded lower alpha angles, femoral coverage vs Pavlik harness
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TAMPA, Fla. — Results showed use of a narrow-base baby carrier yielded lower alpha angles and femoral coverage, which may hamper the healthy growth of infant hips compared with the Pavlik harness and M-position baby carriers.
“From our current and previous findings, we believe that appropriate baby carrying that puts the baby’s hips in an M position (i.e., flexed and abducted position) may be beneficial for infant hips in the long run, even if they are not diagnosed with hip problems,” Safeer F. Siddicky, PhD, from the department of kinesiology and health education at the University of Texas at Austin, told Healio.
Siddicky and colleagues measured alpha angles and femoral head coverage using coronal hip ultrasound while 10 infants with no known or reported orthopedic or neurologic conditions were in a Pavlik harness, an inward-facing baby carrier that placed the infant in the M-position with knee-to-knee support (Boba Inc.) and an inward-facing baby carrier with a narrow base and without knee-to-knee support (Infantino LLC). To obtain alpha angles and femoral head coverage, all coronal hip ultrasound scans were de-identified, blinded to infant position and independently assessed by a board-certified pediatric orthopedic surgeon. Researchers also calculated intra-rater reliability and compared the Pavlik harness and baby carrier data using repeated measures ANOVAs.
“The main finding was that the narrow-based carrier showed significantly lower alpha angles and femoral coverage compared to the Pavlik harness, whereas the M-position carrier did not show any significant difference in either of these modalities,” Siddicky said about the results, which were presented at the Orthopaedic Research Society Annual Meeting.
He added the results showed an intra-rater reliability of 0.84 for the alpha angles and 0.9 for femoral coverage, values which are considered “very good” and “excellent”, respectively.
Based on these results, Siddicky said future studies with similar methodology are needed to identify whether the alpha angles and femoral coverage patterns between the Pavlik harness and different baby carriers also appear among infants with diagnosed hip instability or hip dysplasia.
“If the narrow-base carrier shows such noticeable results in healthy infants, then what does it mean for babies who already have lax hips or already may have untreated or unresolved developmental dysplasia of the hip? Does this mean that we should advocate against using narrow-base carriers that could exacerbate lax hips?” Siddicky said. “Conversely, does it also mean that we should advocate for the use of M-position baby carriers because they seem to have a similar healthy hip position to the Pavlik harness? These are the questions that we want to continue to explore and pose to the broader orthopedics community.”
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Siddicky SF, et al. Paper 74. Presented at: Orthopaedic Research Society Annual Meeting. Feb. 4-8, 2022; Tampa, Fla.
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