[The Harrington operation (long-term review of 100 cases)]

The authors review the results of 100 cases of idiopathic scoliosis treated surgically by the Harrington procedure. The mean remove was 31 months. After a brief introductory section dealing with preparation methods, the paper illustrates the technicalities of the procedure, the usefulness of correction in two stages with a fortnight interval, the various types of mounting and postoperative care. They assess the improvement obtained in terms of vertebral rotation (mean correction achieved: 4.6 degrees, representing 10%) and of lateral flexion (49% improvement over pretreatment values), and they discuss in particular the need for a correct choice of instrument placement and appropriate evaluation of arthrodesis extent in view of avoiding loss of correction. While they acknowledge the value of the Harrington procedure in regard to correction of lateral flexion, the authors propose further refinement of the original method to include correction of vertebral rotation and so improve on current results.