Help DS 14yr NEWLY diagnosed and Dr. recommends surgery!

[tampamom]

Thanks for the information on large curves and tethering. I will contact Shriners in Philly about Tethering hopefully they can give an initial opinion based on his XRAY's. The more I read about fusing down in the Lumbar the more I am concerned about lower back pain.

As far as growing and Risser score, I read that facial hair and voice change are good indications of maturity in boys also. And that boys tend to keep growing as they are older, more so than girls. This is all statistically, so what happens if you tether and don't continue to grow much really, no more than 1 or 2 inches, does the curve just hold and not straighten? Why to do you need to still grow for it to work?

Thank you all for sharing.

[Pooka1]

Thanks for the information on large curves and tethering. I will contact Shriners in Philly about Tethering hopefully they can give an initial opinion based on his XRAY's. The more I read about fusing down in the Lumbar the more I am concerned about lower back pain.

The problem is the lower discs wear out under long fusions. That is probably causing the pain.

As far as growing and Risser score, I read that facial hair and voice change are good indications of maturity in boys also. And that boys tend to keep growing as they are older, more so than girls. This is all statistically, so what happens if you tether and don't continue to grow much really, no more than 1 or 2 inches, does the curve just hold and not straighten? Why to do you need to still grow for it to work?

Thank you all for sharing.

Apparently, just tethering or stapling doesn't work absent remaining growth. That's why they fuse adults and don't tether or staple them. Tethering or stapling arrests the side of the vertebra that is growing too fast (the front) and so use the remaining growth on the back to straighten by evening out the growth. That's why they won't tether or staple any child who does not have enough growth remaining. They will tether very large curves if there is a large amount of growth remaining apparently. These non-fusion surgical approaches are the main hope of avoiding fusion in kids and I really hope they pan out, especially for the TL and L curves which are a very raw deal.

[tampamom]

As far as tethering, unfortunately my son is 5'5" and almost 15. He grew 1 1/2 inches in the past 7 months. He has always been in the 10 percentile for height as a child. His pediatrician even did a bone density test when he was 4 because he hadn't grown one year. So I've always been waiting for him to start growing!

I never knew the unbalanced growing in Scoli was from front to back. I assumed it was one side growing differently.

Will ask Shriners, but I am thinking he is too borderline. Had we only known about his spine sooner.....

[Pooka1]

As far as tethering, unfortunately my son is 5'5" and almost 15. He grew 1 1/2 inches in the past 7 months. He has always been in the 10 percentile for height as a child. His pediatrician even did a bone density test when he was 4 because he hadn't grown one year. So I've always been waiting for him to start growing!

I never knew the unbalanced growing in Scoli was from front to back. I assumed it was one side growing differently.

Will ask Shriners, but I am thinking he is too borderline. Had we only known about his spine sooner.....

The spine curves as the only possible reaction to the anterior overgrowth in a space-filling way...emphasis added

We undertook a comparative study of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) vertebral morphometry of thoracic vertebrae of girls with adolescent idiopathic thoracic scoliosis (AIS) and age and gender-matched normal subjects, in order to investigate abnormal differential growth of the anterior and posterior elements of the thoracic vertebrae in patients with scoliosis. Previous studies have suggested that disproportionate growth of the anterior and posterior columns may contribute to the development of AIS.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14516040

All idiopathic scoliosis cases are due to anterior overgrowth to my knowledge.