The osteoporotic spine: rehabilitation management.

T valuable paper published by Lin et al. in this issue of Europa Medicophysica,1 that highlights a very interesting topic for rehabilitation practice, such as vertebral fractures, needs some deepening. In fact, the rehabilitation management of vertebral fractures, that is called non-medical management (and this is much better than the usual terminology of conservative management, or even not-surgical treatment, where rehabilitation is not considered a treatment per se, but as the negation of the treatment, as surgery is judged), is rapidly described, while the 2 surgical procedures, vertebroplasty and kyphoplasty, are thoroughly explained: it is true that these are new treatments, but rehabilitation is the main interest of our readers. The aim of this commentary is to rapidly review the rehabilitation management of the patient with actual or previous vertebral fractures, focusing on orthosis and physical exercises, even if the last have already been partially addressed by Davis 2 and Shea 3 in this same issue of Europa Medicophysica. In general, the use of supports for the spine is controversial during everyday clinical practice, either for adults and for elderly people, leaving, unfortunately, to individual and discussed experiences the decision to prescribe these spinal orthoses. In the literature there are data on adult low back pain patients only: a recent meta-analysis of controlled studies4 pointed out that there is an evidence, though biased, on the possibility of limiting the range of motion without the