The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery EDITORIALS AND ANNOTATIONS

In 1932 Lowman presented his pioneer work on the value of free fascial grafts to strengthen weak abdominal muscles, including grafts taken from the fascia lata and run from the ribs, the iliac crest, or the symphysis pubis to the umbilicus, and in two cases from the iliac crests to the umbilicus on one side below and from there to the rib margin on the opposite side above. ’ Recently, after twenty years of further experience, Lowman confirmed the beneficial results that can be derived.2 He did not attempt a statistical review of his results, and apparently has abandoned the method of inserting the graft to the umbilicus and instead has run it direct from bone to bone, a method first advocated by me in l935. I first discussed fixed paralytic pelvic obliquity in 1925 in an unusual case of progressive inequality of leg length in a woman of thirty-eight years who had suffered poliomyelitis at the age of four years.4 There was no unequal rate of growth of the bones, but there was fixed abduction contracture of the hip causing downward tilt of the pelvis. By means of a release operation, and a fascial graft to strengthen the paralysed adductors, the pelvic obliquity and inequality of leg length were corrected as confirmed by a twenty-five year follow-up. Further studies of fixed pelvic obliquity soon showed that abnormalities of the pelvi-femoral muscles