Steve Hewitt – Scoliosis Clinical Specialist
4 Highlights of the Past Year

It is a very exciting time in the UK when it comes to the conservative care of scoliosis, with the awareness of postural over corrective bracing and the true benefits this delivers compared to more traditional bracing previous used in the UK. Also, primarily due to the impact of the BASIS (Bracing Adolescent Idiopathic Scoliosis Study), we continue to see how the attitude of clinics and consultants are changing to put in place improved pathways and procedures to allow clarity on their brace effectiveness and work toward best practice. However, over the past year there have been some real stand out highlights for me.

Presenting at The HCPC Conference

Off the back of winning the British Association of Prosthetics and Orthotics (BAPO) Award for Inspirational Innovators, as well as the overall winner at the Advancing Healthcare awards, I was asked to speak at the annual conference of The Health & Care Professionals Council (HCPC) to which orthotists are registered to as their professional body. This was a great opportunity to speak to over 300 staff and raise awareness of our profession and what we do on a day-to-day basis.

Presenting at BAPO

I was invited as a Keynote Speaker to present at the Regional BAPO conference in Birmingham, about the evolution of scoliosis bracing and the advancements in conservative care we are seeing today. This was a great opportunity to speak to my peers and encourage interest in more effective bracing techniques.

British Scoliosis Society Annual Conference

Each year at the British Scoliosis Society annual conference we see it becoming slightly more influenced by conservative care approach, as historically it has been very surgically driven. It was great seeing so many papers being presented by the Sheffield Children’s Hospital team that our team have been involved in.

Our SpineCorporation team were also heavily involved in the organising of the first ‘Conservative Care Day’ at BSS, at which I presented two talks: ‘Is postural Over-corrective Bracing the Answer to the Management of Neuromuscular Bracing’ and ‘Life After Bracing’, looking at the published evidence as well as our own data from Sheffield Children’s Hospital as to what we see happening in the years after brace removal at the end of growth.

Presenting at the SOSORT Meeting

In April of this year, I was honoured to present at my first international conference, having one oral presentation and one poster presentation accepted for the International Society on Scoliosis Orthopaedic and Rehabilitation Treatment (SOSORT) in Dubrovnik, Croatia. It was great to have some of our work within the SpineCorporation and Sheffield Children’s Hospital acknowledged on the international stage.

The poster was looking at how the use of Risser sign to confirm skeletal maturity was unreliable, and using wrist-hand x-rays gave a much more reliable means to make such important decisions about scoliosis management. The oral presentation, which seemed to be warmly received, was extremely interesting to have been part of, and allowed us to learn significantly more about the effect of bracing on the 3D aspect of the spine, particularly in rotation, by recreating 3D models of the spine using an EOS scanner.

For a long time, it has been agreed how important it is to consider and treat the true 3D nature of scoliosis, and look at the sagittal profile also, not just concentrate on Cobb angles, however very little has been done to properly look at this with 3D modelling, especially in brace. This oral presentation was titled, ‘Changes to Asymmetrical Rigid Brace Design After Providing Deformity Measurements from 3D EOS Models in Patients With Idiopathic Scoliosis’.