Rib anomalies in myelodysplasia. An approach to embryologic inference.

An embryologic teratogenic mechanism is reconstructed by utilizing the distribution of anomalous ribs in children with lumbosacral myelomeningocele. This methodology may help to coalesce information from experimental models of teratogenesis and from descriptive human embryology. It provides an approach to deductive reasoning about human structural anomalies based on dynamic embryonic models of teratogenesis. Availability of a developmental time scale, based for example on the distribution of defective ribs, may be useful in the study of other teratogenic and developmental processes.