Thursday, June 2, 2011

Mild Idiopathic Scoliosis Impairs Postural Stability in Female Patients

As previously posted on March 12, 2011 on original blog

In the recent news article summarizing the results of a study on posture and balance in female scoliosis patients, the conclusion seemed to be indicative of a "no-brainer". As one might believe, posture and balance are affected when a curvature of the spine is present. This curvature, or abnormality in spinal growth, creates an imbalance in how children or adolescents can stand, sit, and balance themselves. As one might believe, the spine acts as a center of gravity (COG) that allows the body to balance itself with relation to the other parts of the body. If this COG is affected, then balance of the body is changed for the patient. As you can imagine, especially with children who are in the process of developing complete motor skills anyway, this can be detrimental to the physical and mental development of the child.

The study focused on adolescent idiopathic scoliosis patients with only a mild curvature of the spine (mean curve at 15 degrees). In the tests that followed, children showed signs of instability when facing basic posture and balance tests (with eyes open and closed). The study concluded that more information is needed in order to determine how the variable curve in scoliosis patients affects balance and postural stability in the long term. There have been similar studies relevant to this particular one, but they never seem to gather much data that is new or influential. Most of the conclusions in similar studies, along with this one, seem to be common sense in nature. There is hope that a more in depth and conclusive study can determine the long standing effects of scoliosis on balance and posture for male and female patients, including submissions for correction of this imbalance. The abstract (I cannot provide my signon for the full article according to the website - which is ridiculous) can be found at :

http://medicalnewscenter.com/out/out.cgi?http://www.modernmedicine.com/modernmedicine/Modern+Medicine+Now/Mild-Idiopathic-Scoliosis-Impairs-Postural-Stabili/ArticleNewsFeed/Article/detail/710401?ref=25

Please visit http://www.thescoliosisfoundation.org/ for more information.

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