Risk of developmental dysplasia of the hip in patients subjected to the external cephalic version

Are term breech babies who undergo successful external cephalic version still at increased risk of developmental dysplasia of the hip?

“…The study by Andersson and Oden4 is the only one to include ‘naturally cephalic’ babies (ie, babies who were never found to be breech at/near term) in their comparison and found that cephalic delivery after ECV did not reduce the risk of DDH to match that of naturally cephalic babies. The other two studies5 6 suggest lower risk of DDH after successful ECV with rates of 2.8% and 8.5%, respectively. However, compared with the incidence of DDH in all babies (0.48%7), their results do not suggest that successful ECV reduces the risk to that of cephalic presentation babies.…”

“…We found three studies relevant to our question (table 1). There was heterogeneity in definition of DDH with two studies using ultrasound scan-based definition of DDH4 5 and the third study using need for treatment to define DDH 6. Using pooled analysis, the prevalence of DDH defined by either definition was higher in babies born by cephalic presentation after successful ECV (4%) compared with that in cephalic presentation (1%) (online supplemental table).…”