It cannot be emphasised too much that these comparisons are only approximations to give a guide as to the interpretation of the Dutch and German grading systems.  There could be glaring anomalies, for example a dog with a score of 6 in one hip made up of 2 for Noreberg angle and 4 for Subluxation would have to be at least a D1 international grade.

It would be possible but very involved to go through the comparison of the systems in much greater detail but even then it would not be possible to get to the stage of stating categorically that a dog with a German grade Leicht HD would score between 5 and 8.

I would like to thank Dr M Kramer of the Veterinary Faculty at the Justin-Leibig University, Giessen who supplied some of the information I have used.

The grading system used in the USA is even more difficult to correlate directly to the Australian scoring system so what follows can only be taken as a fairly rough guide.  Here again what is quoted is the score of the worst hip only.

Now addressing the question of how successful the hip dysplasia control programme has been.  Progress has been painfully slow but there is a reason for this.   If only those dogs with a 0 score       were bred from there would have been a rapid decline in the incidence of hip dysplasia as has been demonstrated by some experimental breeding programmes carried out in Sweden.   This approach is, however, socially unacceptable as it would eliminate a large percentage of many breeds from breeding.  A compromise was reached which acknowledges that dogs with some degree of hip dysplasia can be included in a breeding programme hence the slow progress of the control schemes.   

Some breeds are taking things a bit further and looking at the scores of offspring so that it can be assessed whether a particular individual is producing offspring with lower scores or higher scores than the parents.  This is called progeny testing.