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Updated: May 27, 2025
The epiphysial cartilage usually continues its bone-forming functions, but when it has been seriously damaged or displaced, the further growth of the bone in length may be interfered with. Sometimes the separated and displaced epiphysis dies and constitutes a sequestrum. The adjacent joint may become filled at an early stage with a serous effusion, which may be sterile.
The lesions in infancy epiphysitis, bossing of the skull, and craniotabes have been referred to in the chapter on inherited syphilis. Epiphysitis or Syphilitic Perichondritis. The first of these terms is misleading, because the lesion involves the ossifying junction and the shaft of the bone, and the epiphysis only indirectly.
Separation and displacement of the epiphysis usually reveals itself by an alteration in the attitude of the limb; it is nearly always associated with suppuration in the adjacent joint. When pathological fracture of the shaft occurs, as it may do, from some muscular effort or strain, it is attended with the usual signs of fracture.
When there is marked rarefaction of the bone at the ossifying junction, the epiphysis is liable to be separated epiphysiolysis. The separation usually takes place through the young bone of the ossifying junction, and the surfaces of the diaphysis and epiphysis are opposed to each other by irregular eroded surfaces bathed in pus.
These symptoms are due to a sub-periosteal hæmorrhage, and associated with this there may be crepitus from separation of an epiphysis, rarely from fracture of the shaft of the bone. X-ray photographs show enlargement of the bone, the periosteum being raised from the shaft and new bone formed in relation to it.
Any diseased process that affects the periosteum is spoken of as periostitis; the term osteomyelitis is employed when it is located in the marrow. The term epiphysitis has been applied to an inflammatory process in two distinct situations namely, the ossifying nucleus in the epiphysis, and the ossifying junction or metaphysis between the epiphysial cartilage and the diaphysis.
The articular aspect of the epiphysis is invested with a thick layer of hyaline cartilage, known as the articular cartilage, which would appear to be mainly nourished from the synovia. The external investment the periosteum is thick and vascular during the period of growth, but becomes thin and less vascular when the skeleton has attained maturity.
It may be necessary to administer an anæsthetic before rupturing strong fibrous adhesions, and this procedure must be carried out with caution, in view of such risks as fracture of the bone which is often rarefied or separation of an epiphysis. There is also the risk of fat embolism, and of re-starting the original disease.
Five-sixths of the fractures occur between the time of weaning and the animal being six months old; not, perhaps, because of their chemical composition, that the bones are more fragile at this age; but because young dogs are more exposed to fall from the hands of the persons who carry them, and from the places to which they climb; and the extremities of the bones, then being in the state of epiphysis, are easily separated from the body of the bone.
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