Incidence of surgery in conservatively treated patients with scoliosis

The effectiveness of bracing and the effectiveness of conservative treatment of scoliosis as a whole is widely denied and rejected. We therefore carried out the present study in order to establish whether the work involved in the conservative treatment of scoliosis is reasonable and worthwhile, including as it does the education of patients, techniques of brace moulding, time-consuming follow-ups and the strain put on patients by the treatment itself.

A retrospective analysis of the incidence of surgery in patients with scoliosis presenting every kind of aetiology. To improve comparison with data already published by other centres, this group of patients was matched with the study design of the control group.

Since 1992, in addition to the intensive inpatient rehabilitation programme developed at our centre, we have also been practising moulding techniques according to Chêneau in order to construct scoliosis orthoses of high correction. For the purposes of this study we chose a number of scoliosis patients from our data bank who had had conservative treatment at our centre between 1993 and 1996. All the patients, like those of the untreated control group, were at least 15 years of age at the time they were last investigated or questioned. The incidence of surgery in our group was compared statistically with data published by other centres.

Three hundred and forty-three patients (females only) with a curvature of 33.4 degrees (SD = 18.9) were included in our study and could be followed up under the described pre-conditions. Forty-one patients (11.95%) had had surgery. In patients with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis, we found an incidence of surgery of only 7.3% compared with 28% in the control group with the same diagnosis. Statistically, therefore, the incidence of surgery in our group was highly significantly lower than the incidence of surgery in the control group from Ireland and other centres described in literature.

The conservative treatment of scoliosis (which includes outpatient physiotherapy, inpatient intensive scoliosis rehabilitation (SIR) and high-correction-effect bracing based on plastercasting) shows an obvious reduction in the rate of surgery in patients with idiopathic scoliosis compared with untreated scoliosis patients. Thus it can be seen that the conservative treatment of scoliosis may reduce the incidence of surgery, which not only causes considerable medical expenses but also carries with it the risk of repeated operations and further complications. In our study, we also found highly significant differences by comparison with the work of a bracing centre in the USA. Therefore, the quality of the bracing itself and the effects of primary correction must receive greater consideration in future scientific studies on the subject of "conservative" treatment of scoliosis.