Bracing Scoliosis

Brace Categories

Current bracing systems for scoliosis fall into five categories

  • Milwaukee/Superstructure Braces
  • Symmetrical Rigid Braces with Correction Pads. E.g. Boston Brace, Wilmington Brace. Lyon Brace, Sport Brace.
  • Night-Time Only Braces Hyper-corrective 2D Braces. E.g. Charleston Brace, Providence Brace. Designed for night time only use.
  • Hyper-Corrective 3D Braces – Cheneau derivatives (Gensingen, RSC, WRC, Scoliologic Cheneau Light Brace), The LA 3D Brace, Boston 3D Brace
  • Soft, Flexible Braces – Spine-Cor.

What Brace Do I Need

  • You have been prescribed a scoliosis brace, where do you go from here?
  • There are many different types of braces and many different providers of braces. Multiple studies have shown that bracing outcomes vary depending on the type of brace and also vary depending on which orthotist is providing you with the brace. Unfortunately, healthcare insurance companies in the USA, group scoliosis bracing along with all other bracing and prosthetics and contract with companies not with orthotists. Therefore your health insurance will likely refer you to a company that quite probably does not have an orthotist with significant scoliosis bracing experience. You can take the risk and hope you get an okay outcome or you have to look for an alternate provider
  • So how do you know who will provide you with the best possible outcomes? What are the appropriate questions to ask a prospective scoliosis bracing orthotist?
  • Often, because this is something new to parents, I find they typically ask questions that are not really that relevant such as “What type of brace do you provide?”, “How is your brace different form other braces?”

Firstly, ask who the “Scoliosis Orthotist” is (if they do not have a scoliosis specializing orthotist then this is a big red flag) and email an image of your x-ray directly to the orthotist and then follow up with the following questions:

What is the type and size of the scoliosis?
How many new scoliosis patients do you typically see in a year?

A scoliosis orthotist should see at least 30 new patients per year

Can you provide me with an example of another of your patients original x-ray and in-brace x-ray to demonstrate the kind of correction you are estimating?

If the orthotist truly specializes in scoliosis then they should easily be able to provide with another example similar to your curve pattern

What percentage of these new scoliosis patients have a pattern similar to mine?

Depending on the pattern scoliosis this can vary considerably from 2% to 30%. If you are provided a number greater than 30% then the orthotist over-simplifies scoliosis

What percentage in-brace correction do you estimate we will get?

this also should vary depending on the curve patter and size and should be between 30 and 70%

How many hours do you recommend the brace be worn?

bracing has been proven to be dose dependent. Unless you have a small curve [<25 degrees] the orthotist should be recommending full time [>20 hours/day] wear time)