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OFA Retesting

9K views 16 replies 12 participants last post by  Gerry Clinchy 
#1 ·
I got a call from a friend today who had a dog come back with mild dysplasia results. She wasn't sedated for her x-rays. Just curious - how many of you guys have re-sent new x-rays (or even the same ones?) and gotten different results/better results?

Their vet gave em a look beforehand and said they looked good to him, but I don't know anything about his credentials in the department.
 
#3 ·
I got a call from a friend today who had a dog come back with mild dysplasia results. She wasn't sedated for her x-rays.
I would tell your friend to take the dog to a vet who sedates the dog for the x-rays most likely gonna come back with different results. To many cases where unsedated dogs get x-rays and later get them redone sedated and end up with better results. Doing the X-rays without sedation is a waste of money in my opinion.
 
#4 ·
This article about the importance of positioning is pretty good:

http://leerburg.com/hipart.htm

It has an example of one dog with poor positioning receiving a poor OFA score, and then the same dog with better positioning receiving an acceptable score. It also has hints about how to tell if the positioning is correct for the xrays, which may help your friend evaluate whether positioning was a factor or not. This is assuming that the vet who did the xrays is of no help.
 
#5 · (Edited)
There's always a chance, OFA ratings are subjective. OFA x-rays and positioning are so important that you need to go to a qualified vet-xray tech who specializes in OFA to take them, one who is familiar with their ratings. Most of the time an OFA vet, will not even let you send them in unless they are sure they'll come back passing. If the films are iffy they'll usually tell you to come back and retake later, before they'll submit them. Could be a variety of reasons the results came back MD (positioning, subluxation, dog hasn't reached full growth). All I know is the vet that has done my OFA's always has a prediction on the rating and is always right. Might be because she used to do the evaluations-results for the OFA ;). Both times she was worried about the x-ray (1. subluxation of a bitch who was due to come into season) (2.A larger male that hadn't finished growing @2yrs.) She told us to come back and retake, the later x-rays turned out better and both received passing results. I'm glad she refused to send in the first x-rays.
 
#6 ·
My first Lab was sedated and came back dysplastic. I went to a different veterinarian, x-rayed her without sedation and she came back good.

I have never sedated since and all of my dogs have come back good or excellent. However, my doc works really hard to get proper positioning even if he has to shoot several times.

Meredith
 
#7 · (Edited)
My dog came back indeterminate, sedated. It said send new ones in a few months, which I did, fully sedated, they were almost identical. On the ofa site it says if no changes, they will be rated fair. When I got the results, she came back mild. I called ofa, spoke to one of their vets and they said well we didn't like her right hip and even through there were no changes, we rated her mild. I was kinda annoyed because they didn't follow what they said on their website. She was 60% on pennhip. LDI=.29; RDI=.42. Mood point now, because she died prematurely but it made me feel like offa was even more subjective than I had already thought. I'd rather see penn hip.
 
#11 ·
My dog came back indeterminate, sedated. It said send new ones in a few months, which I did, fully sedated, they were almost identical. On the ofa site it says if no changes, they will be rated fair. When I got the results, she came back mild. I called ofa, spoke to one of their vets and they said well we didn't like her right hip and even through there were no changes, we rated her mild. I was kinda annoyed because they didn't follow what they said on their website. She was 60% on pennhip. LDI=.29; RDI=.42. Mood point now, because she died prematurely but it made me feel like offa was even more subjective than I had already thought. I'd rather see penn hip.
Sorry for your loss. It would seem that PH and OFA were in line in this case, though. Both were telling you that the right hip wasn't that great. What does 60% really mean but that she's only better than 40% xrayed by PH. That (in combination with a .42 DI on the right hip) wouldn't make me that comfortable as a breeder, really. And PH is only looking at tightness, correct? I really like to see the depth included in the rating personally.
 
#8 ·
My Shiba Inu came back dysplastic. We re took them a couple months later and she came back with a good rating.
 
#13 ·
The only litter I have had guy calls and says his pup was mild displastic. My heart sank and a couple weeks later I spayed my female. Had a lot of problems with litter anyway. A while later he calls says he took his dog to dr Ed who did not do first rads and reshot them. Came back excellent.
 
#14 ·
Oops, sorry I misread that 60% (and I have no excuse other than maybe work or caffeine overload at that time of day!).
I'd personally not be that happy w/ a DI of .42 in a Labrador, but then again, in one of my first litters years ago, a bitch pup I kept had mild to moderate HD, so maybe I'm just extra anal about it. I would not consider Labs to fall into that category of not having tight hips as a breed, btw. I think they are referring more to the breeds like Bulldogs, etc. Labs have very decent OFA stats these days--- http://www.offa.org/stats_hip.html
 
#16 ·
yes. But it depends on WHY you got the "bad" results to begin with. If the joint has a ball and socket, even if not quite as deep as you'd like, then a new set of x-rays may be worth it. I had one big male that belonged to a friend of mine. The hip x-rays looked terrible. The dog was sedated. He was a Big, low tone goof ball of a dog. There was rotation at the hip that rotated the head of the femur externally making it look as if the head of the femur was not well into the socket. So, the next few months I swam the heck out of him. Really muscled up his rear - all of him, actually. Took him to a very experienced vet and had them shot awake - nothing like a little "fight" to cause muscle and ligament contraction (and they all do because they don't like to lie on their spines on a hard table), and the hips were rated "good".

Find out why they didn't pass, and you'll have an idea on whether reshooting the X-ray is worth it.
 
#17 ·
Did the results indicate that DJD was present? That makes a big difference.

DJD is what "confirms" hip dysplasia. I have had the OFA call a 6 yr old dog "mild" when he had no DJD.

If no DJD is present, the reading is a "prognosis" that the dog will eventually develop DJD. Only when the DJD is present is the prognosis a confirmed diagnosis. So, I had a big gripe with my 6 yr old who got a below-median reading with no DJD from PennHIP.
 
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