Scoliosis Blog

My friend Jonathan accosted me few days ago... he asked where the most recent Rant was. Sorry, I have been remiss in posting. Here is my ramble from December January..

Another flight. another time to write. Its been a long time since I have been away with the family. My 9 year old daughter commented that she cannot remember the last time she had been on a flight with me. Most of the time I tend to meet the family after they have arrived at a particular location, and then I leave before them. This ramble of a JOURNEY into the world of scoliosis has taken me a long time and a lot of time has been without the family.

Dr Rigo often comments that he struggles to find time to be with his family and cannot fathom the workload he is under. It is hard finding time....

About 4 years ago, I started this journey in livingroom of Lior Neuhuaus in a small town in Israel. I am heading back to Israel, back to Lior and her mom Tamar (who was one of the original physio's on SOSORT). I have also planned to spend some time playing with a very special machine called a Formetric. It is a very accurate postural measuring camera. DIERS is one of the few companies who exhibit at the SOSORT conferences and this is their machine. It is shocking to see how much money is invested into the surgical exhibitions appended to spinal deformity conferences compared to conservative management strategies. Anyway, most the the centres around the world are monitorng their patients using a formetric system. It is supposedly
way more accurate than the manual measurements I am curently taking. It is non-radiation emitting and can be used as a screen for progression and also for saggital curve imbalances.

I have been speaking to DIERS for a few months now and have am awaiting approval from TGA to order a machine. There are few machines available and the one they have in Israel is one of the most modern. It is used in a clinic owned by a global private medical aid, who have been convinced that exercising in a posture modifying shoe can delay and prevent knee and hip surgery. This sounds familiar .... Maybe we wil one day have a global medical aid encouraging their members to try exercising in a brace to delay or prevent surgery.

Last week I saw another case.. a young mother with 3 kids had been refused employment because of her scoliosis curve. She has no history of pain and kept fit and active by exercising including kayaking. Many years ago I worked for a rehabilitation consultancy and did multiple pre-employment screens like this. It is tragic that some therapist can decide the fate and future employment of an individual without full knowledge of the underlying condition and its behavior. I once went to a conference on back pain, an expert stood up on stage and asked the audience for a show of hands 'who does not experience back pain' he thanked those who raised their hands and accused the non responders of lying. This caused a quick chuckle in the audience as we all know the statistics . 80% of the population will experience back pain. When scoliotics experience back pain how do we know if they are any different from the general population? The truth is that we dont know for sure. There is some evidence that scoliotics experience slightly greater incidence of back pain than the general population. They may
(but not always) experience slightly greater severity of back pain than the general population
with back pain. BUT.... if a young at heart fit healthy person with no back pain arrives at
your doorstep then I dont think that a history of scoliois is sufficient to prevent them from
employment. Besides the psycho-social-emotional background has been shown to be a greater
predictor of employment problems.

I am back on a plane again. back to Sydney. I got to spend quality time with the family. Got to spend time with the formetric machine and met up with a cousin who was distressed that her daughter has recently been diagnosed with scoliosis. 4 years ago I was only a beginner in this game but now could confidently contribute to the managment of my cousin's daughter. I met up with Tamar and Lior who commenced treatement of my cousin and we sat down and reviewed mutual cases.