Skip to main content
  • Oral presentation
  • Open access
  • Published:

A study of assessments of camptocormia

Introduction

Camptocormia (or bent spine syndrome) is defined as abnormal posture, with marked flexion of the thoracolumbar spine, increasing during walking, and disappearing in the supine position. This definition is not so clear, and indeed, there are no consensus criteria for diagnosing camptocormia. Consequently, the prevalence of camptocormia is difficult to determine. More often, the diagnosis is made by subjectively assessing the patient’s posture, but this approach is no more satisfying, because the camptocormia can be overestimated or underestimated.

Aim

The aim of our study was to investigate different methods for assessing camptocormia.

Material and methods

Camptocormia was subjectively defined as forward flexion of the thoracolumbar spine that disappeared in the recumbent position. Patients were excluded if they were not able to walk more than ten meters without human or technical help. All the includable patients were convoked one afternoon for clinical, radiological, and kinematical assessments for the following 30 days. Parameters: Two visual radiological and kinematic markers were initially positioned on the patients. They were left on the skin during all the assessment, in order to be able to relay clinical, radiological and kinematical conditions. One marker was positioned in regard to the spinous process of C7, and the other marker was positioned in the middle of the segment relaying the two Michaëlis fovea, in order to project horizontally to S1. Sagittal inclinations were valued by the C7 arrow, defined as the distance from the C7 marker to a plumb line of the S1 marker.

Results

Forty three patients (28 females and 15 males; 69 ± 10 years) were included in the study. The mean increase of the C7 arrow during walking was 64.2 ± 45.6 mm for the patients presenting an initial C7 arrow superior or equal to 200 mm, and was 31.6 ± 30.1 mm for the patients presenting an initial C7 arrow inferior to 200 mm, (p= 0.0040). For each static condition, we could define a similar threshold separating the patients in two groups of and increasing C7 arrow during walking.

Conclusion

These results open perspectives in order to propose objective definition of camptocormia.

References

  1. de Sèze M, Lavignolle B, Mazaux J, Schaeverbeke T, Tison F, Vital : Déviations rachidiennes et maladie de Parkinson. Revue de Rhumatisme. 2004, 290-296.

    Google Scholar 

  2. de Seze MP, Creuze A, de Seze M, Mazaux JM: An orthosis and physiotherapy programme for camptocormia: a prospective case study. J Rehabil Med. 2008, 40 (9): 761-765.

    Article  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Doherty KM, van de Warrenburg BP, Peralta MC, Silveira-Moriyama L, Azulay JP, Gershanik OS, Bloem BR: Postural deformities in Parkinson's disease. Lancet Neurol. 10 (6): 538-549.

  4. Mac-Thiong JM, Transfeldt EE, Mehbod AA, Perra JH, Denis F, Garvey TA, Lonstein JE, Wu C, Dorman CW, Winter RB: Can c7 plumbline and gravity line predict health related quality of life in adult scoliosis?. Spine (Phila Pa 1976). 2009, 34 (15): E519-527. 10.1097/BRS.0b013e3181a9c7ad.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

De Sèze, M., Guillaud, E., Slugatz, L. et al. A study of assessments of camptocormia. Scoliosis 8 (Suppl 1), O31 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-7161-8-S1-O31

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-7161-8-S1-O31

Keywords