Scoliosis Blog

Hi all,

OK. listen up!!!

We know all about scoliosis. The internet is full of information and there is more than enough "stuff" to educate till  confusion but at some stage we have to make a decision to do something. I don't remember if it was Dr Rigo of Spain or Dr Negrini in Italy who said, you can't do nothing!!

I am planning on going to Chicago next year, to the next SOSORT meeting.  It's my third year of attending and I think it's time to present something. I have heaps of data but very little of the data involves our most applicable cases. I enjoy working with all my patients but the patients most in need of therapy are delaying treatment till its almost too late.  I would love to present a large series of pre-menarche AIS cases in treatment. That means scoliotic kids BEFORE their major growth curves.   Unfortunately this is not the case, we are seeing large curve cases in almost fully grown kids. I wish we could get to these cases earlier.

I have also witnessed the unintentional mis-management of some cases by both our surgical and non-surgical colleagues.  It astounds me that some of the surgeons are running round the world learning the most modern surgical technique when the orthotist down the hall is still supposed to use 50 year old bracing knowledge and devices. The surgeon is then "disappointed  that the bracing didnt work but it's not really that unexpected.  But dont worry, we can fix it surgically!".

so...  My talk will go something like this, We have seen a large amount of scoliosis cases but unfortunately not many of them are best practice appropriate, so I will be discussing the conservative management of progressive adult scoliosis with reference to osteoporosis and pelvic incidence.

I am sure that this mouthful will change but the title of this blog is a ramble.. or maybe tonight it should be Rant!

I have put some photo's of some x-rays together of the last few week's cases.  Gratefully, some of them didn't even need treatment!