Last week there was an item on the local news about Birmingham Royal Orthopaedic Hospital. It featured a 9 year old girl who was about to have magnetic growth rods inserted - see the link below. You will see it's Mr Marks (who was J's consultant at BROH) who talks about the new treatment.
central tonight news clip "Spinal Surgery Thu Mar 1 2012 A nine year old girl is the first person in the Midlands to have surgery for spinal deformity using a new technique. Rhiannon Medlyn is having magnetic rods put into her back which should fix curves in her spine."
J's new consultant at Oxford Mr Nnadi is leading the trial on this new treatment.
link to trial details at Oxford
My thoughts on seeing this clip:
1. I was struck by the degree of pain this girl is suffering. When I asked about the effect of J's scoliosis on him in later life, I was told that below 40 degrees, people don't have any more back pain than other adults. I was also told that children of his age don't suffer pain from the curves. I wonder what age/angle the pain starts? J's curve is measuring between 30 and 36 depending on the xray and who reads it. This girl talks about pain in her shoulders, back and legs. She's only 9. I don't know what angles she has. I sincerely hope that we can help J's curves improve so that he doesn't suffer pain from his scoliosis.
2. I hope that the new treatment we start on 21 March (just over 2 weeks to go) can help correct the angles. I hope we don't have to go down the surgery route (however good it is that they've got a technique where they don't have to repeatedly open up the wounds every 6 months).
3. I do wonder about the motivation of the medical profession (please note that I'm not being specific about any particular doctor - I'm just making a general observation) when they have new gadgets like this. The whole approach of Miss Mehta was to achieve *gentle* correction using serial casting at an early age. I would imagion some surgeons find it much more exciting to have new equipment and hi-tech gadgets. Not that it isn't appropriate in some cases and it's great if it avoids repeatedly opening patients up, but I know there isn't much research into scoliosis compared with other conditions and whizzy things might be more attractive than gentle but also effective means... am I being too cynical?
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