Scoliosis Blog

Although unintentional this blog is becoming a diary of work every 2 months.

Since school holidays finished, a few adults have been undergoing treatment.  Adult curves are interesting in that in the majority of cases there is no major concern for impending surgery. Some of the adults have already had surgery and some are not in surgical range.  Adults attend Schroth for different reasons; some come because of pain and some to prevent their curves progressing.  There is a thought that curves over 30 degrees in an adult will progress 1 degree per year.  I will try to find the source of that comment.

here is a comment from DS:

Hi Larry!   I just thought I’d let you know how I’m going with my Schroth regime. 

It took me a few days to get the ‘equipment’ ready … it seemed like an eternity but was really only two days.  And my sewing skills … well, that’s another story.  At least the wedge & cushion are holding together much to my surprise. 4 or 5 mornings a week I do the program of exercises ….. I am supposed to be doing 5 sets of 5 reps aren’t I ? I used to find sitting for any period of time uncomfortable, needing to prop myself up on the right side.  But now I just need to sit straight and maintain the correct posture and I minimal trouble.  And when standing (and sitting), I am continually correcting. So, Larry, a huge thank you for teaching me how to manage the curves and twists!   I know I should come back for a ‘tune up’, but may need to leave it until after December.  In the meantime, I will get some photo’s of my progress and email them FYI.

I also had the opportunity to work with a very special 7 year old girl from Victoria named E.  I have often said that Schroth therapy is ideally implemented after the age of 10 in females but  E's mother is an osteopath and we agreed that we would introduce her to some of the concepts of Schroth now, so that when she needs to work at the age of 10 she has already experienced the technique. During E's time in the clinic I met up with Jeb McIvenney who has recently returned to Sydney from the UK. Jeb, who is a chiropractor, travelled the world teaching the Spinecore bracing course and is therefore one of the world's expert Spincore brace fitters.  It somehow worked out that E met up with Jeb and now she is progressing well in her new Spinecore brace.  I will follow up on her progress with interest.

I continue to get queries about our Schroth protocol and treatment aims.  It seems that there is no standard treatment protocol for Schroth therapy.  Barcelona and Wisconsin both treat over a fortnight, Germany and the UK treat for a month.  I treat over a 5 day week.  My reasoning is simple; Medicare only rebates 5 sessions of physiotherapy per calendar year.  So when I started off the treatment protocol  I started off with 5 treatment sessions over 5 days.  As the sessions are one on one we can get through a great deal of quality work within the sessions.  The goal of the week is that by the end of the week the patient is able to perform 20-30 minutes of effective Schroth exercise and to understand how and why they are doing those particular exercises and corrections.  Once they have completed the week, we meet up every for months for revision and then again for another week when able to.