Department of Biology

Predicting Postoperative Outcomes Following Vertebral Body Tethering: Does Skeletal Maturation Matter?

Dr. Melanie E. Boeyer

September 29, 2021
4-5pm

Hosted By Dr. Kasie Raymann

Abstract

More than 100,000 children each year are diagnosed with Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis, which is characterized by an abnormal lateral curvature of the spine. Of those, approximately five percent require surgical instrumentation to correct their deformity. An innovative surgical technique, known as Vertebral Body Tethering, was recently approved by the Food and Drug Administration to correct such scoliotic deformities through guided growth modulation. Because this technique capitalizes on the remaining growth of a patient to correct the deformity, precise knowledge of exactly how much growth will occur postoperatively is essential to obtaining positive clinical outcomes. The trick, however, is that such precise estimates are difficult to obtain without dense longitudinal data – something that is often not available in pediatric clinical practice. This talk will focus on variation observed in skeletal development and its impact on surgical outcomes through the lens of real-life pediatric patients treated with Vertebral Body Tethering.