The effect of an exercise intervention on adolescent idiopathic scoliosis: a network meta-analysis

To explore the effect of exercise intervention on adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS), various exercise forms were compared and the sequence of the possibility of improving the effect of each exercise form was sorted out. We expect that our findings will provide clinicians and patients with more effective treatments and references.

A thorough search was done on CNKI, Wanfang, WOS, Cochrane library, Embase, PubMed, Scopus and obtained the publication time from the database establishment to May 6, 2023. The relevant contents of the literature that passed the screening criteria were extracted, including relevant information about the sample, first author, intervention measures, intervention time, and outcome indicators. Analysis was performed by Review Manager 5.4 and Stata17.0.

The study finally included 12 articles with 538 samples. After comparison, it was found that exercise interventions to reduce Cobb's angle were more effective than conventional therapies and reached a statistically significant difference. Compared with conventional therapy, core strength training, Physiotherapeutic Scoliosis-Specific Exercise (PSSE), yoga, Schroth, and sling reduced the Cobb angle by an average of 3.82 degrees, 3.79 degrees, 4.60 degrees, 3.63 degrees, and 3.30 degrees, respectively. However, the therapeutic effects on AIS did not show statistically significant differences between the exercise interventions. According to the SUCRA value and the cumulative probability, the MeanRank of improving the AIS effect by various sports intervention measures as follows: yoga (2.2), core strength training (2.8), PSSE (2.8), Schroth exercise (3.2), and sling exercise (4.0).

Exercise intervention can significantly improve AIS. There was no significant difference in the improvement effect of AIS among different exercise forms. Yoga may have the best effect on AIS improvement.