Orthoses for mild scoliosis: a prospective study comparing traditional plaster mold manufacturing with fast, noncontact, 3-dimensional acquisition.

Study Design. A prospective comparison of 2 different methods to make orthoses in mild scoliosis. Objective. To evaluate the therapeutic efficiency of orthoses made by a computer-aided design procedure. Summary of Background Data. It is now possible to make orthoses by a computer-aided design procedure. In order to evaluate this new method, we carried out a comparative study between the traditional and computer-aided design-manufactured orthoses. Methods. In this prospective study, we compared the 2 methods by studying the cases of 30 adolescents with mild scoliosis. For each patient requiring orthopaedic treatment, we made 2 ortheses: 1 using the traditional method and 1 using the computer-aided design method. There were 26 girls and 4 boys whose average age was 13 years and 3 months. Each body jacket was successively used in random order following the same protocol. Neither the prescriber nor the patient knew the origin of the orthosis used. The final choice of the orthosis was made using 3 criteria: first, improvement of the scoliotic curves on the frontal and lateral radiologic planes, and second, the patient’s impression of comfort. Results. For the 30 cases, 13 traditional and 16 computer-aided design body jackets were chosen. In 1 case, no significant difference allowed us to chose one body jacket rather than the other. For the frontal radiologic correction, the better results were obtained 3 times with the computer-aided design body jacket, 5 times with the traditional one, and in 22 cases, the results were equivalent. For the lateral radiologic correction, the better results were obtained 11 times with the computer-aided design body jacket, 3 times with the traditional one, and in 16 cases, the results were equivalent. For the comfortof the 2 body jackets for each patient, the better results were obtained 12 times with the computer-aided design body jacket, 8 times with the traditional one, and in 10 cases, the results were equivalent. Conclusion. Based on our results, we believe that the computer-aided design procedure is equally efficient to traditional method for mild scoliotic curves.