Cheaneau brace and Schroth

[KJD]

Hi,
I am interested in hearing about anyones ACTUAL experience with Schroth and the Cheneau brace. Please I am only interested in hearing from people who have actually tried the treatment, not from other biased parties that haven't and think they know everything ( Pooka1, talking to you ).

Anyway, would love to hear your experience good or bad. Plan to go to WI, scoliosis rehab for schroth and VA for the brace from Luke, daughter just diagnosed, she is 10.

Thank you,
Karen

[Pooka1]

Hi,
I am interested in hearing about anyones ACTUAL experience with Schroth and the Cheneau brace.

Me too.

.

.

[mamandcrm]

We have no experience with Schroth therapy but our experience with the Rigo-Cheneau and Luke has been excellent. My daughter has found the brace comfortable from Day 1, and has had no problem wearing it for almost all her activities. She wears it only p/t now but used to be f/t, and wore it for horseback riding/jumping, lacrosse, tennis, etc. Her in-brace correction has been uniformly excellent and her out of brace result to date speaks for itself. She started at 35* and is now 11* out of brace. She has held below 15* for over a year now. My daughter likes Luke and is comfortable with him (she is a shy kid) and he makes a big effort to make sure she is happy with the fit of her brace. Good luck with everything!

[Pooka1]

Apples and Oranges

When you read testimonials, be careful in comparing pre-growth spurt bracing success in JIS cases to that in AIS cases. JIS pre-growth spurt appears to have a far better track record based only on the testimonials posted here. Who knows what the real deal is.

[KJD]

Thanks for the reply, since I've posted, I took my daughter to VA to see luke and get the rigo cheneau brace, we are currently in WI learning schroth. My daughter has adjusted to wearing a brace amazingly. Luke was wonderful and very informative and took a great deal of time to make sure the brace was comfortable and working for her. She's had no problems wearing it and quickly got up to wearing it full time, in fact she prefers to wear it as she tells me her back feels better in the brace rather than out of it. We have only been doing schroth for 2 days, it's not easy but it is very informative and the difference it makes is obvious.

[mamandcrm]

Glad to hear it's working out well--hope the Schroth therapy proves beneficial

[Still Hoping]

Hi KLD

I too would be interested in learning more about the Schroth program. Do you have experience with that? What part of Wisc. is the clinic at? Can you tell me more? It is possibly the next avenue I will try for my daughter and would love to hear your story.

[KJD]

Hi still hoping,
My daughter was diagnosed this past november with an S curve, the worst degree
being at 40 degrees. I started researching...

In my research for Schroth, I came across the clinic in stevens point, WI. You can go to their website at www.scoliosisrehab.com to get their history and contact information They were more than happy to provide references which have been invaluable to me. They recommend a two week visit to their clinic but we did a week. For each day we had a two hour session in the morning and another two hour session in the afternoon. My daughter worked with both Beth and Patti, who are wonderful, I really can't say enough about them. The exercises are very detailed and require very specific positions. Your daughter being 14 won't have a problem, but at 10, learning the positions was a bit trying for my daughter.

Apart from the exercises, they also teach and have you practice body corrections
for proper body alignment, exercises that should avoided, and proper way to bend down.

Towards the end of the week, my daughter and I had free time to practice the exercises by ourselves to see if we had any questions and if we had a good understanding of them before going home. They also made a binder containing detailed descriptions of the exercises with pictures for our reference and a DVD of my daughter doing the exercises and the PT narrating and assisting. There is equipment needed such as wedges, a stool, 4" and 6" PVC pipe, ball, belts and a thing that is mounted to the wall which she can climb up and hang from and do other various exercises on. All of the pieces they sell or they will provide you schrematics so you can make it yourself. We made ours and we had no issues or problems making it. The exercises are supposed to be done for 30 minutes a day, 5 times a week. They want us to send pictures of her doing the exercises in six weeks so that they can monitor that she is positioning correctly and make any comments.

They reccommend a hotel in the area that gives discounted rates for people who are there for the clinic. We flew into Milwaukee and drove north maybe an hour & 20 minutes then west another hour and 20 minutes to get to Stevens Point. It is a small town, but very nice.
Please let me know if you have any other questions.
KJD

[Still Hoping]

Hello KJD

KJD said: Hi still hoping,
My daughter was diagnosed this past november with an S curve, the worst degree
being at 40 degrees. I started researching...


Oh Thank you so much KJD! You have really provided so much information! I did a somewhat similar 2 wk. treatment with my daughter, only not Schroth, but CLEAR in Wisconsin. You've prob. read my thread. We are waiting to have her xrayed again in Jan. Then hopefully we will know if it is working or not.

Since I know even with the best outcome it's not going to be fantastic, I would like to prob. try Schroth and/or Torso Rotation. Dingo (I think? - Hope I'm not misquoting here, I'll check it) swears by it. I know my daughter really needs help with her posture and body alignment! She is always flopped over in some strange position. She does not like to get instruction from me! (stubborn little thing!) So it sounds like the careful attention and instruction from a clinician would benefit her. The schedule sounds tough, like CLEAR, only it was 6 hrs. a day, 7 hours from us, and 2 45 min. "exercises" per day, so 1 1/2 hrs per day. That's very very hard on her schedule. I don't want to take her out of any more activities (she's only got a couple but then there's homework). I already pulled her out of her beloved basketball... She wants to stop doing the "chair" now.

I guess this Schroth clinic would be really expensive again, like CLEAR. Did you take her over the summer break? Timing is critical. She is growing, but I don't know about taking her out of 2 wks. of school. Then again, I think this is more important, personally. Something more for me to STRESS about in the wee hours...

What else did you do while you were in Steven's Point? Are there any activities to do around there or things to see? Did it get a little boring? (Just as an aside, have you heard of "The House On The Rock" ?? I think it might be very near that area. It is an EXTREMELY unusual one-of-a-kind thing to see. It is worth every penny, and you will never forget it!)

How is your daughter doing now? Is she still doing her exercises? Are you confident you are doing them correctly? How is her motivation? How much did the equipment cost? Would you recommend this treatment to others? I heard that the Schroth technique discourages any kind of twisting, as in torso rotation. Is that true? It sounds great, I have bought the Schroth book, and I'm going to visit the website now.

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Hope I didn't rant too much. I wish you and your daughter the very best. Good luck to both of you!

[Elisa]

Still Hoping, I noticed that your daughter is 14. As a side note, I just wanted to say that my daughter is almost 17 and she pretty much reached her full height (5' 9") when she was around 14 as many girls do. Perhaps your daughter has stopped growing now, have you noticed that at all? Unfortunately my 14 year old son has not stopped growing yet as boys do grow for several more years than girls. I am glad he's on the taller side though (5' 8") so if he goes into surgery I'm sure he'll gain another few more inches if/when his spine is straightened and ending up being around 5' 10/11" is not so bad for a boy. My older boy is 6' 3" and quite built but I really don't think my younger boy would be like his older brother anyway b/c he is much more slight with finer bones all around.