From the Departments of Physical Medicine and Regional Rheumatism Centres,

cases of rheumatoid arthritis. In 1931 Coates and Delicati found 16 patients with hip abnormalities in 100 consecutive cases at Bath. The statistical analysis of "rheumatoid arthritis by Faningin 1950 showed hip changes in 16 % of 532 patients, while Forestier et al. (1951) found hip involvement in 10 % of patients at first examination. Unfortunately none of these figures give a satisfactory index of the incidence of hip involvement in rheumatoid arthritis in the absence of details of the diagnostic criteria used, the selection of patients seen in the series, and the stage of the disease at which they were seen. Analysing 279 consecutive patients at the London Hospital subjected to a routine annual review either as out-patients or during in-patient treatment, we found some evidence of hip arthropathy in 114. All these patients satisfied the American Rheumatism Association diagnostic criteria for "definite " rheumatoid arthritis (Ropes et al, 1959) and were unselected except in so far as they had been referred to hospital and were seen by one of the doctors carrying out this survey i