Background

The treatment of congenital spinal deformities is a real challenge. The modern standard of treatment includes surgical interventions intended to correct or fuse the spine. In some cases, such an approach is impossible because of severe comorbidities. We hypothesized that a Cheneau brace might be effective in young patients with congenital spinal deformity. This paper is a continuation of our previous study.

Objective

The objective of this study was to study Cheneau brace treatment results in patients with congenital spinal deformities during 2-years follow-up.

Materials and methods

We investigated 7 patients with congenital formation failure. 2 patients had wedge vertebra, and 5 patients had hemivertebra. They were treated utilitizing the Cheneau brace from 2007 to 2009. The mean age at the beginning of treatment was 5.6 years (range 2-9 years). A full-time regimen was prescribed for all the patients.

Outcome

We observed a significant improvement of Cobb angle, wedge angle, and Cheneau index after 1 year of bracing treatment. After 2 years, radiographic data did not change dramatically, but slightly improved (Table 1).

Table 1 Analyzed data during follow-up
Full size table

Conclusion

We conclude that Cheneau brace active correction principles provide correction and control of congenital spinal deformities.