Originally posted by titaniumed
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The $64,000 question about bracing, even given the BrAIST study, is does it allow some patients who would otherwise need surgery to avoid surgery for life? We can say with some certainly that in many brace cases, because the curve after even "successful" bracing was > 30*, that these patients cannot be assured their efforts let them avoid surgery. Bracing likely only delays surgery for these larger "successful" bracing cases. Recall that in BrAIST, a 49* curve with up to 25% growth remaining was scored as a "success". I think we know for a fact that some of these "successes" will be failures at some point in the not too distant future.
There is a reason they didn't publish the Cobbs for the "successful" curves. And I think it is the same reason one of the authors ignored my direct question about this issue.
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