Okay I searched my threads that I started and indeed I started questioning bracing almost from when my daughter went into the brace and well before we knew she needed fusion. I have to point out though that this may not be a case of brace failure as she decided to stop wearing the brace several months after starting.
Here are some threads I started that questioned bracing:
http://www.scoliosis.org/forum/showt...all&highlight=
http://www.scoliosis.org/forum/showt...nts&highlight=
http://www.scoliosis.org/forum/showt...uot&highlight=
And only later did we realize my daughter needed fusion...
http://www.scoliosis.org/forum/showt...hoe&highlight=
No need to apologize!
Concerned Dad credited my posting those papers with taking his daughter out of brace. And indeed her curve held until WELL past skeletal maturity and then moved. She was spared brace treatment and made it to skeletal maturity at a"safe" curve level. That would have been considered a brace failure if she had been wearing the brace but in fact it was not a brace failure since she wan't wearing one! This is how dicey the situation is and how the literature can't be other than a train wreck in my opinion.
Actually as I recall, I started reading the bracing literature when my daughter was first put in one because I wanted to know the fact case. I think I realized it was a train wreck WHILE she was wearing it and BEFORE I knew the outcome of her case. The history of my thinking on this is probably memorialized in the forum so whatever that shows is what went down w.r.t. timing of my thinking about bracing. Maybe I started looking at the bracing literature only after her brace failure as you suggest but I don't think so. That may be went I became more vocal about it but until I found the paper on the refractory nature of Marfans (and perhaps other connective tissue disorders) to brace treatment, I would not have realized that my daughter was not typical and was probably doomed to fail brace treatment.
I have mentioned at least a few times that I think the case for bracing would be somewhat better if they excluded the connective tissue disorder patients. This area of research is rocket surgery when it is hard to exclude certain conditions from brace studies for some reason.
Here are some threads I started that questioned bracing:
http://www.scoliosis.org/forum/showt...all&highlight=
http://www.scoliosis.org/forum/showt...nts&highlight=
http://www.scoliosis.org/forum/showt...uot&highlight=
And only later did we realize my daughter needed fusion...
http://www.scoliosis.org/forum/showt...hoe&highlight=
Originally posted by rohrer01
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Concerned Dad credited my posting those papers with taking his daughter out of brace. And indeed her curve held until WELL past skeletal maturity and then moved. She was spared brace treatment and made it to skeletal maturity at a"safe" curve level. That would have been considered a brace failure if she had been wearing the brace but in fact it was not a brace failure since she wan't wearing one! This is how dicey the situation is and how the literature can't be other than a train wreck in my opinion.
Actually as I recall, I started reading the bracing literature when my daughter was first put in one because I wanted to know the fact case. I think I realized it was a train wreck WHILE she was wearing it and BEFORE I knew the outcome of her case. The history of my thinking on this is probably memorialized in the forum so whatever that shows is what went down w.r.t. timing of my thinking about bracing. Maybe I started looking at the bracing literature only after her brace failure as you suggest but I don't think so. That may be went I became more vocal about it but until I found the paper on the refractory nature of Marfans (and perhaps other connective tissue disorders) to brace treatment, I would not have realized that my daughter was not typical and was probably doomed to fail brace treatment.
I have mentioned at least a few times that I think the case for bracing would be somewhat better if they excluded the connective tissue disorder patients. This area of research is rocket surgery when it is hard to exclude certain conditions from brace studies for some reason.
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