Comparison of Sacral Ratio Between Children with Chronic Constipation and Control Group

Chronic constipation is a common problem in children and makes a significant portion of the outpatient visits. Because sacral disorders would impair the defecating mechanism, this study was aimed to evaluate sacral ratio (SR) as a criterion of sacral bone and its association with chronic constipation.
This study was performed on 52 children aged 0 - 15 years referred to the radiology department during 2014 - 2015. The case group included 26 patients with chronic functional constipation and the control group included 26 others without chronic constipation, which had been referred for pelvic radiography for other reasons such as trauma or suspected hip joint problem; Anterior-posterior pelvic radiography was done for both case and control groups and SR in each group was calculated and compared.
The case group included 14 females and 12 males with average age of 5.20 ± 3.61 years and the control group included 20 females, and 6 males with average age of 6.97 ± 4.09 years. The defecation occurred once a week in 50% of all children in study group, 26% of them had no defecation in a week. In control group, 54% had defecation once or twice a day. Mean SR in the study group was 0.8 ± 0.12 and the control group was 0.826 ± 0.15, but the difference was not statistically significant (P > 0.05). Other variables including gender and times of defecation did not show significant relation with SR. The mean of SR in continent cases was more than incontinent cases, although not statistically significant (P = 0.216).
In this study, SR showed a wide range of values in both groups and the mean SR in control group was more than the study group but this difference was not statistically significant. Therefore, the sacral ratio canot be seen as a useful tool for evaluating chronic constipation in children.