Amazing Progress. Superior Outcomes.

If you were a young scoliosis patient before the early 1960s, your surgical treatments would have been fairly limited. More than likely, treatment would have involved a full-body turnbuckle cast worn from the head down to one thigh. Doctors would cut the cast in half using a huge tree saw and install a metal lever, called a “turnbuckle,” on one side. Then, over the course of five weeks, they’d turn the lever to correct the curvature of the spine.

And that was just the beginning, explains David B. Levine, MD, Chief of Scoliosis Surgery at Hospital for Special Surgery from 1967 to 1994 and current director of alumni affairs and Chair of the HSS Archives Committee. Next, doctors cut a window into the cast so they could perform surgeries through it. Because anesthesia was so limited, procedures couldn’t last longer than a couple of hours, which meant the young patient had to undergo several procedures, often weeks apart, to achieve the surgical goals. Recovery took nine long months, and the child had to learn how to walk again before going back home. In all, the process lasted about a year, during which time the child couldn’t get out of bed.

Thankfully, improvements were on the horizon. Next came the Harrington rod procedure, a revolutionary (and significantly more streamlined) treatment first performed at HSS in 1963 that involved attaching the rod to the spine using hooks, then pulling the vertebrae together using wire to straighten the curve. When the child stopped growing, doctors performed a spinal fusion surgery, a complex procedure that prompts the vertebral bones of the spine to grow together into a single, solid bone. This popular combination helped children recover faster from surgeries and did away with cumbersome post-operative casts.

The Harrington rods were replaced by expandable growing rods, which are still used today. The rods are attached to the top and base of the curvature of the spine using screws or hooks and lengthened one centimeter manually twice a year to account for a child’s normal growth. Though effective, they require the child to undergo surgery every six months.

Now, orthopedic surgeons are beginning to use high-tech magnetic lengthening rods to help treat spine curvatures in young patients. The MAGnetic Expansion Control (MAGEC) rods internally brace the spine, allowing it and the chest to grow while also keeping the scoliosis curve in check, explains Roger F. Widmann, MD, Chief of Pediatric Orthopedic Surgery at Hospital for Special Surgery’s Lerner Children’s Pavilion.

See our story Magnetic Lengthening Rods Are Nothing Short of "Magic" to see how these rods have affected young patients over the years.