Providing patients undergoing bracing for adolescent idiopathic scoliosis with feedback about their compliance with brace wear improves that compliance. Patients who wore their brace more hours per day had less curve progression. Patients in both groups who had curve progression to a magnitude requiring surgery wore their brace less than their counterparts for whom bracing was successful. Compliance monitoring and counseling based on that monitoring should become part of the clinical orthotic management of patients with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis.

Prognostic Level II. See Instructions for Authors for a complete description of levels of evidence.

Purpose: Once Ponseti correction of a clubfoot is achieved and 3-month full-time bracing treatment is completed, part-time bracing treatment for 12 hours at night for 2 to 4 years is considered necessary to maintain a successful outcome. This study objectively documents the amount of daily orthosis wear time in those who maintained correction at age 2 years and, in so doing, determines how well patients' caretakers comply with the prescribed brace program. Methods: Patients <3 months old with idiopathic clubfeet when Ponseti treatment was initiated, who successfully maintained correction at age 2 years without surgery and who had complete objective brace wear data, were included. The foot abduction orthoses had a temperature data logger embedded in a shoe. Six 3-month time intervals were monitored in every patient as follows: full time: 0 to 3; night time: 4 to 6, 7 to 9, 10 to 12, 13 to 15, and 16 to 18 months. The families were not informed that hours of brace wear were being measured. Results: One hundred twenty-four patients with 187 clubfeet were included. During the 0- to 3-month interval, wear time averaged 19.8 hr/d. After this period of full-time use, the night-time brace wear decreased over each of the subsequent five intervals: 11.9, 9.6, 8.6, 7.9, and 7.7 hours. By the 18-month period of brace wear, 1 of 3 patients wore the orthoses less than 6 hours per day, and nearly 1 of 2 patients wore the orthoses less than 8 hours per day. Discussion: In patients evaluated at age 2 years whose clubfeet had successful nonsurgical treatment, night-time brace wear varied greatly and decreased over each 3-month period measured. By the second year of bracing treatment, nearly half of the patients wore them 8 hours or less. Level of Evidence: Level IV case series

Background: Although studies have been published stating obese patients are less compliant with brace use, no objective studies measuring hours of daily brace wear have been performed to correlate brace wear and success with body mass index (BMI). The purpose of this study was to establish the relationship between BMI and brace compliance, and between BMI and progression to surgical magnitude of 50 degrees or more. Methods: A total of 175 adolescents were prescribed thoracolumbarsacral orthosis for the treatment of an adolescent idiopathic scoliosis and followed to completion of treatment. BMI was measured at brace prescription, and divided into: (1) underweight (< 5th percentile), (2) normal (>5th, <85%), (3) overweight (>85%, <95%), and (4) Obese (>95%). Thermochron sensors were used to measure compliance. Radiographs were measured at brace prescription, and at time of brace discontinuation or surgery. Outcome was classified as successful if curve magnitude was <50 degrees and no surgery was performed. Results: The underweight group wore their braces more hours than the other groups (15.7 h low, 12.5 h normal, 11.7 h high, and 9.0 h obese BMI (low vs. normal P=0.031, low vs. high P=0.01, low vs. obese P=0.01). The underweight group had the highest rate of surgical progression (60%), compared with 27.7% of normal BMI teens, 28.6% of overweight patients, and 55.6% of obese patients. The low BMI had a significantly higher rate of surgery than the normal BMI group (P=0.01). Conclusions: Although overweight and obese patients wear orthoses the least hours daily, the highest surgical risk is in underweight adolescents despite good compliance. Level of evidence: Level 2.

No abstract