Indications for conservative management of scoliosis ( guidelines ) SOSORT guideline committee

This guideline has been discussed by the SOSORT guideline committee prior to the SOSORT consensus meeting in Milan, January 2005 and published in its first version on the SOSORT homepage: http://www.sosort.org/meetings.php. After the meeting it again has been discussed by the members of the SOSORT guideline committee to establish the final 2005 version submitted to Scoliosis, the official Journal of the society, in December 2005. Definition Scoliosis is defined as a lateral curvature of the spine with torsion of the spine and chest as well as a disturbance of the sagittal profile [2]. Etiology Idiopathic scoliosis is the most common of all forms of lateral deviation of the spine. By definition, it is a lateral curvature of the spine in an otherwise healthy child, for which a currently recognizable cause has not been found. Less common but better defined etiologies of the disorder include scoliosis of neuromuscular origin, congenital scoliosis, scoliosis in neurofibromatosis, and mesenchymal disorders like Marfan's syndrome [3]. Epidemiology The prevalence of adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS), when defined as a curvature greater than 10° according to Cobb, is 2–3%. The prevalence of curvatures greater than 20° is between 0.3 and 0.5%, while curvatures greater than 40° Cobb are found in less than 0.1% of the population. All etiologies of scoliosis other than AIS are encountered more rarely [4]. Classifications The anatomical level of the deformity has received attention from clinicians as a basis for scoliosis classification. The level of the apex vertebra (i.e., thoracic, thoracolumbar, lumbar or double major) forms a simple basis for description. In 1983, King and colleagues [5] classified different curvature patterns by the extent of spinal fusion required; however, recent reports have suggested that Published: 08 May 2006 Scoliosis 2006, 1:5 doi:10.1186/1748-7161-1-5 Received: 15 December 2005 Accepted: 08 May 2006 This article is available from: http://www.scoliosisjournal.com/content/1/1/5 © 2006 Weiss et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.