A research study at Sainte Justine’s University Children’s Hospital & Research Center in Montreal Canada was led by two prominent orthopedic surgeons, Dr. Christine Coillard and Dr. Charles Rivard to examine the differences in outcomes between adolescents with scoliosis that were not treated at all for their scoliosis and those treated with SpineCor.
The study titled A Prospective Randomized Controlled Trial of the Natural History of Idiopathic Scoliosis versus Treatment with the Spinecor Brace divided a group of 68 teens who had been diagnosed with idiopathic scoliosis who’s curves were between 15° to 30° and were at high risk for progression into 2 groups. The Treatment Group were fitted for SpineCor braces while the Control Group received the common recommendation of just “Watch & Wait” and do nothing to treat the scoliosis. This allowed them to compare the natural history of scoliosis progression in cases that had gone untreated and compare the outcome to cases in the other group that had received SpineCor treatment.
Patient’s were considered to be at “High Risk” for progression if they had any of the following risk factors:
• A family history of scoliosis
• Early onset of a curve
• Late onset of puberty
• They’ve already shown some progression in their curves
Researchers evaluated the differences in outcomes over a 5 year period between the 2 groups and at the end of the 5 year study the data showed that 50% of the SpineCor Group had improvement in their curves compared to only 9.5% in the control population.
It also found that the untreated group had nearly double the rate of scoliosis progression vs. the SpineCor treated group. In fact because the parameter’s of the study that would not allow for children who showed progression to go untreated it removed them from the control group if they had a progression of more than 5° they would be removed from the study and provided with treatment.
This study showed that for children with risk factors for progression were left untreated then the natural progression of scoliosis is likely to get worse in approximately 50% of these patients.
While those treated with the SpineCor brace were able to significantly reduce the probability of the progression, 73.1% of the time in early idiopathic scoliosis compared with its natural history.
Extrapolation of the study data showed that had those untreated control subjects patients stayed in the study that the overall progression of the group would have be around 75%. That’s nearly three times the rate of scoliosis progression compared to those patients treated with SpineCor!
The long term results with SpineCor treatment showed that 73.1% of patients had continued stabilization or further reduction of their curve after stopping treatment and was maintained over the long term. This makes SpineCor an effective long-term treatment for scoliosis that is best provided early on, when the curve is most correctable.