Does quality of exercises affect results in adolescent idiopathic scoliosis treatment to avoid braces? SEAS.02 results at two years

Abstract

Objective After documenting the short term higher efficacy of SEAS.02 (Scientific Exercises Approach to Scoliosis, ver-sion 2002) versus classical physiotherapy [1], with this study we aim at verifying it in a longer term. Study design The design was a prospective controlled study of AIS patients who were prescribed exercises only, to avoid pro-gression to brace treatment. All patients were enrolled consecutively. These results report on the second year of radiological follow-up. We had three groups: (1) SEAS exercises according to the SEAS.02 protocol (n = 20); (2) CONT, classical physiotherapy (n = 29); (3) MIX, patients who changed protocol during treatment (n = 8). Mean age was 12.7 ± 2.2 years, mean Cobb angle was 15.3 ± 5.4 degrees, and Bunnell angle of trunk rotation (ATR) [2] was 8.9 ± 2.8 degrees. There were no differences among the groups, using t-test for uncoupled data, Mann-Whit-ney, Fisher's Exact and chi-square with α = 0.05. Results The difference in the number of braced patients was statis-tically significant: 10% in SEAS vs. 27.6% in CONT and 25% in MIX. During the observation period, only three patients have been discharged and were considered as suc-cess of treatment: 7% in CONT, 5% in SEAS, and 12% in CONT. Overall, SEAS had better results than both CONT and MIX.