Investigation of the profound causes of the not brace compliance in adolescents

Background

The BBS Questionnaire it has performed in different countries and seems to be reliable. The aim is to understand the profound causes of the not compliance with a scoliosis brace.

Materials and methods

We have administrated in 291 adolescents with Idiopathic Adolescents Scoliosis, the BBS questionnaire, adding one more question. The added question was “if I believe that the brace can change the image that my school friends have for me”. We have divided in two groups 219 girls and 72 boys. The average age was 14,5y and the Cobb angle was from 19 to 64 and the Surface Rotation angle from 7° to 24° . All the data were analyzed by statistical methods and the scores have been compared between the two groups.

Results

It was a net difference between the answers of the group of girls in confront of the second group in almost all the questions. There was an identical answer for three questions. The first was” it is hard for me to be open with my brace”. The second was “I don´t feel embarrassed to show my brace to people close to me (parents, friends and school friends)” and the third was our new added question “if I believe that the brace can change the image that my school friends have for me”

Conclusion

It seems that the adolescents girls have less compliance with the brace in general but all the adolescents in total they do not fear the opinion of the population in general as much as the opinion of the small competitive community of the school. We think that all the countries must stand on this problem and promote compliance through programs and information seminars at the schools.