The treatment of scoliosis / by Robert W. Lovett.

  • Robert W. Lovett
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The treatment of scoliosis / by Robert W. Lovett. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    allow it to be taken off so that the patient may do exercises daily. Such exercises must be me- chanically sound, vigorous, and given in suffi- cient dosage to develop the muscles which have been atrophied by the prolonged fixation, and in order to develop a set of muscles strong enough to maintain a correct position in standing. Such exercises must be continued for a long period, and the jacket gradually discontinued. If jack- et and exercises are stopped too early a relapse will occur. The period of active treatment will occupy from one to two years, and in cases due to in- fantile paralysis much longer. Permanence of Results. As to the perma- nence of results, it can only be said that it is an accepted fact that bone in its growth follows the line of least resistance, and that growing bone can be reshaped, as evidenced in the treatment of club-foot, that the writer has shown by the x-ray that the bony curve may be materially straightened by jackets,25 and finally that Schanz26 has produced evidence that clinically so far as watched the results were permanent in the cases presented. Such is a summary, from my point of view, of the present status of the treatment of scoliosis. Water can rise no higher than its source, and a summary cannot be more definite than the sub- ject summarized. We have added to our re- sources in the last ten years the forcible jacket, and in so far we have gone forward. Let us hope that in the next ten we may find a better agreement among orthopaedic surgeons as to the relative values of different treatments, and be able to record as great progress as we can al- ready look back on in the matter of the treat- ment of congenital dislocation of the hip and . infantile paralysis.
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