ORIGINAL ARTICLES   Free access

Europa Medicophysica 1998 March;34(1):25-31

Copyright © 1998 EDIZIONI MINERVA MEDICA

language: English

Effect of exercise therapy on mild idiopathic scoliosis. Preliminary results

Ferraro C., Masiero S., Venturin A., Pigatto M., Migliorino N.

Orthopaedic Rehabilitation Unit, Institute of Orthopaedics, University of Padua, Italy

OBJECTIVE: The aim of ­this ­paper was to ­test the effi­ca­cy of exer­cise ther­a­py in mod­i­fy­ing the evo­lu­tion of the defor­mity in chil­dren ­with ­mild idiopath­ic sco­li­o­sis.
METHODS: We recruit­ed 34 con­sec­u­tive scol­i­ot­ic sub­jects (­mean age 11.6 ­years, ­range 8.7-14.1 ­years) ­with an ­initial ­mean Cobb ­angle of 14.9° and a ­mean hump ­height of 7.3 mm. They ­were ­assigned to one of two phys­i­cal ther­a­pists who ­used dif­fer­ent tech­niques ­with the ­same ther­a­peu­tic ­goals (­active pos­tu­ral cor­rec­tion of sco­li­o­sis). Subjects ­were ­asked to con­tin­ue ­their exer­cis­es at ­home for at ­least 30 min­utes a day. Thus, ­most of the exer­cise pro­gramme was car­ried out in the ­home. After a ­mean of 2 ­years of a) treat­ment, we per­formed a mul­ti­ple linear regres­sion anal­y­sis for the chang­es in Cobb ­angle as a func­tion of a) the actu­al involve­ment in the ­home pro­gramme (min­utes per day), b) the phys­i­cal ther­a­pist var­i­able, and c) the poten­tial­ly con­found­ing var­i­ables (such as initial Cobb ­angle and age, Risser ­sign and dura­tion of the treat­ment). A sim­ple linear regres­sion anal­y­sis was per­formed for the changes in hump height as a func­tion of the lev­el of par­tic­i­pa­tion.
RESULTS: Results ­showed ­that max­i­mal par­tic­i­pa­tion in exer­cise ther­a­py (≥30 min day) for the ­mean dura­tion of 2 ­years, as com­pared to min­i­mal par­tic­i­pa­tion (<10 min/ day), ­slowed ­down and ­even halt­ed the pro­gres­sion of the defor­mity (­curve and hump). Results did not dif­fer sig­nif­i­cant­ly ­between the 2 ­therapists’ ­groups.
CONCLUSION: If fol­lowed rig­or­ous­ly, an accu­rate exer­cise pro­gramme ­appears to effec­tive­ly lim­it the wors­en­ing of defor­mity in ­mild sco­li­o­sis.