How successful is plaster casting?
Very-about 90-plus percent of patients get better due to casting. Q: If the curve continues to progress despite the plaster cast, what other treatment options are available? A: If a curve progresses, we’d do surgery involving an anterior and a posterior fusion. Q: Why would you have to do two fusions? A: If you only do a posterior fusion, two things happen: first, it may not fuse, because the back of the spine is the ‘tension’ side of the spine, and bone under tension tends not to heal very well. Second, the front of spine will continue to grow and will twist out, causing the spine to bend backwards into a lordosis. Q: When surgery is necessary, is it important to fuse patients at the earliest age possible? A: In many cases, we would try to delay surgery until the child had reached a reasonable size, say at the age of 10, but sometimes that’s not possible, and early surgical treatment is necessary. Also, it is well known that by the age of two, children have reached almost half of thei
