Fairbank disease is the name for one of two traditional categories of multiple epiphyseal dysplasia, or MED. Although other variations of MED are recognized, diagnoses are still often labeled by the former names. The Fairbank variant is the more severe of the two, and the milder version is referred to as the Ribbing variant. The affected epiphyses are small, irregular, or fragmented in the Fairbank variant, whereas in the Ribbing variant the involved epiphyses are often flat.