Scoliosis Blog

Another month has gone by and the learning curve continues.

Dr Rigo had a very insightful comment  back in Wisconsin. When describing the concept of Schroth "work" to the patients attending the course he reminded them that it would take at least 30 min of daily effort and that the "work" had to be of a sufficient quality to affect the  curve profile positively.  He said that if the 30min felt like 2 hours then the intensity and concentration (and hence quality) was probably not as good as it should be; but if the 30 min felt like 5 min then the quality was probably good.  This last month certianly has flown- hopefully because the quality and intensity of the work has been good.

Last month I commented on the reluctance of the SRS community to accept physiotherapy as a method to treat scoliosis.  Their current accepted protocol accepts 2 methods of treatment.  Surgery and Bracing. There are quite a few methods of bracing and previously in the blog I mentioned the RSC brace (Rigo style Cheneu brace) which is a rigid brace. Another kind of rigid brace is the Boston brace.

Over the last few months I have been treating quite a few patients who wear a non-rigid brace called the Spinecor brace http://www.spinecorporation.com/English/index.htm. This brace is very intersting in that it is (as stated) non rigid and also not readily accepted by the "recognised" spinal surgeons in Australia.  There is a fair amount of literature around on the brace it appears that in some circumstances the rigid braces have been shown to be more effective than the non-rigid spinecore brace.  However, spinecore maintain that the author's of the studies were not qualifed to fit the brace and hence their results were flawed.

Spinecore ran a brace fitting course last month in Melbourne. As I treat patients who use the brace and the fittiing of the brace is very important I decided to go along and do the course. Additionally, spinecore has a specific physiotherapy program which I wanted to do as well.

The course was very, very good and the trainer; an ex Aussie who is the internation R&D manager has a wealth of experience.

We reviewed both the adolescent bracing system and a new adult bracing system that Spinecore has recently released.   The majority of the other attendants on the course were probably aiming to eventually get certified to prescribe the Spinecore brace however that was not my original intention in doing the course... at least now I have a better understanding on what the brace is trying to achieve.