I have a friend with scoliosis. In high school, she had to wear a plastic back brace that encircled her entire torso. It was white, padded, velcroed, and had little breather holes over the abdomen. She wore it under her shirts, so when I tried to hit her abdomen, which was often, I hurt myself instead of her. She would tell me that if her curvature worsened by a few more degrees she'd require surgery to correct her back, which was terrifying because of the likelihood of paralysis from surgery. I'm glad it never came down to that.
Now there's an alternative to traditional surgical methods and it's pretty neat: magnetic rods placed in a child's back that can be manipulated externally, thereby eliminating repeat surgeries that gradually align the spine. Magnets seem like such a simple answer and I'm glad that someone dreamt this up.
that's brilliant!! but would it work on older kids too? Most of the scoliosis-friends I now have all discovered theirs around middle school (some even a bit later)
ReplyDeleteI can't find anything from the FDA about this, which is called MAGEC (http://www.ellipse-tech.com/pages/MAGEC_patients). All of the articles written about it, though, mention "young" or "growing" children. The idea is to use the magnets instead of the very frequent surgery that kids must have to replace rods as they grow. I think it's meant for those really extreme cases in kiddos.
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