The Scoliosis Research Society SRS-22 Questionnaire is used to show increasing deformity in young people with idiopathic scoliosis, and researchers sought to consider whether scoliosis interferes with these patients' lives before diagnosis. They published their results in The Spine Journal.
The researchers examined SRS-22 for patients before their first scoliosis evaluation and after. Here are the results:
1. Female and male patients in all subgroups of Cobb angles were above four points with small standard deviations apart from the self-image domain.
2. The female patients — who made up 75 percent of the patients — showed significant differences among all groups for all domains and total scores.
3. The three areas that did not show statistically significant difference among male patients include:
• Function
• Pain
• Mental health
4. All the differences were below the minimally clinically significant change — 0.5 points.
5. There was a very low correlation with the severity of deformity measures.
"According to our results, deformity is apparently not a real issue for AIS before diagnosis made, treatment planned and/or specialists interfere with their everyday life," concluded the study authors. "SRS-22 demonstrated some discriminative validity between small and large curves, but the differences found were small."