A note on the distortion theorem.

The distortion theorem is a conditional statement that establishes the certain relations between the variation of the mean bond length and the variation of the valence of a central ion of a coordination polyhedron. It was found that in some principal cases the conditional part of the distortion theorem is not necessary. A combinatorial evaluation of the distortion theorem and a theoretical analysis of the bond length-bond valence correlation were performed. An extension of the distortion theorem is proposed.