Growing Spine Blog

2-27-2025 Above is a 15 year old male with a right thoracic idiopathic scoliosis measuring 55 degrees. His Risser stage is 4 and Sanders stage is 7, which means there is some, but not a lot, of vertical spinal growth remaining until he reaches skeletal maturity. From the side there is a lower amount of […]

Severe, Focal Early-Onset Congenital Scoliosis Treated with Hemivertebra/   3-Column Osteotomies:Outcomes of Growth Guidance vs. Growing Rods 2-23-2025 This is a podium presentation we presented at the International Congress of Early-Onset Scoliosis last November 2024.  These are 4 major goals when we surgically treat children with spinal deformity (not inclusive) Traditional and Magnetically-Controlled Growing Rods are […]

1-21-2025 This is a case of a 9 year old female with a chromosomal deletion and early-onset scoliosis. She was managed nonoperatively for many years, due to slow progression and the deformity remained very flexible. However, she developed more sitting imbalance, sitting intolerance and the deformity started to become more stiff, hence discussion switched to […]

1-5-2025 Today’s post is a podium research presentation presented at the combined meeting of the Pediatric Orthopaedic Society of North America and the European Pediatric Orthopaedic Society last May 2025.

10-10-2024 As discussed in previous posts, the indications and issues for surgical treatment of scoliosis in neuromuscular patients (such as cerebral palsy, spina bifida, spinal muscle atrophy, etc.…) can be much different than for other types of scoliosis. The ambulatory ability of neuromuscular patients can be highly variable. It is important to have a good […]

This post is an update to the 3-30-2021 post on a 4-year-old with severe, complex, mixed-type of congenital scoliosis. The major problem for this young patient (4 years old) who has two adjacent hemivertebra which is at the junction of the thoracic spine (chest) and the lumbar spine. These two hemivertebra cause an acute, severe […]

First of all, who is indicated for surgical treatment of lumbar spondylolysis (also called pars defect or pars fracture)? Nonsurgical treatments, such as physical therapy, bracing, activity limitation, injections are the primary interventions. These can be done for as long (months to years) as the patient is functioning at an acceptable level and has and […]

This is one of the many reasons I love my job!

7-10-2024 13 year old female, active athlete Low back pain when participates in athletics Left trunk shift Right shoulder is higher than the left Near the end of skeletal growth Due to the magnitude of her deformity and skeletal age, surgery was discussed and, after discussions with patient and family, a posterior spinal fusion of […]

Followed by conversion to Growth Guidance Surgery 6-26-2024 This case is a continuation of the last post in which a very young male was treated with a unilateral MAGEC rod.  In that post the case ended at 3 years after placement of the MAGEC rod with it being maximally lengthened.  He is now 6 years […]