Part 2 of 10 | Scoliosis 3D Deformity Explained

Dr. Walter Salubro Interviews Dr. Jeb McAviney, Scoliosis Expert, Lecturer, CEO of ScoliCare, and Founder of ScoliBrace

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Dr. Walter Salubro:
So there’s different categories, different types of scoliosis. What are the, what are the most common types? When did they start. Let’s get into that kind of discussion?

Dr. Jeb McAviney:
Yeah, so there’s lots of different causes for scoliosis. Most of them are fairly rare. Like we have congenital scoliosis, which makes up about 10%. So with a congenital abnormality, we can have neurological based scoliosis from neurological disorders, such as cerebral palsy or soft tissue disorders, such as Marfan’s. But you know, those ones are pretty rare. The most common types adult degenerative scoliosis and adolescent idiopathic scoliosis. And idiopathic means that we don’t really know the cause, but it also means something else. It means that it’s not really caused by any pathology or any serious underlying medical condition. And it’s really those two types that affect most of the people in the world with scoliosis.

Dr. Walter Salubro:
Got it. So I’m going to put the screen here, if I can get it on there.

Dr. Jeb McAviney:
Okay. In terms of prevalence, we actually justI just came from the SOSORT meeting in San Francisco. We presented a paper on the prevalence of adult degenerative scoliosis. And if we look at, we did a systematic review, we looked at all the data that was out there and the prevalence across the board for adults, this is about 38% is very, very high in adults. Adolescents it’s reported somewhere between 2 to 4%. However, you know, we still need to do more research because we think that actually, perhaps that prevalence is a little bit higher

Dr. Walter Salubro:
Got it. So I have do you see the pictures there on your monitor doc? So let’s go back to this one. So we talked about the the idiopathic, so maybe just describe them, you know, what’s happening with that spines, if you have an idea what we, what we’re looking at.

Dr. Jeb McAviney:
For. So what we would typically like to see if we’re looking at that x-ray is that each one of the vertebrae stacks on top of the other to make a straight line. But obviously we can see that the spine is curved and this is where the traditional diagnosis of the scoliosis comes from. If we look very closely in the middle of the curve where the inflection point is, that’s what we start to see the rotation occurring. And we actually start to see the vertebra instead of being square they started to become wedged. When we talk about deformity, that’s what we mean is this developmental deformity that occurs during growth, typically, or a degenerative deformity that occurs later on in life.

Dr. Walter Salubro:
Sure. So is it the actual, the vertebral bodies actually literally physically deforming or is it more of like a projection problem of the x-ray because it’s rotated.

Dr. Jeb McAviney:
So it’s physically deforming and that physical deformation causes the spine to rotate. When we talk about rotation, rotation is really an indirect way of saying that there’s deformity there. But it’s a good point that you can make for the chiropractors that take x-rays. If someone has a, a big trunk shift, if they’re antalgic, for example, that might look like rotation, but that’s that’s an artifact on the end.

Dr. Walter Salubro:
For sure. For sure.

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Part 1 of 10 | What Is Scoliosis? (Dr. Walter Salubro Interviews Dr. Jeb McAviney)