Bracing and stress. The perception of stress in adolescents wearing a Boston brace for scoliosis treatment

This study examines the impact of Boston brace treatment on the perception of stress, of scoliosis adolescents living in Athens, Greece. Material-Methods One hundred fifty braced scoliosis adolescents 12-18 years old, from the 5th Orthopaedic Clinic of the KAT Hospital in Athens and a control group of 150 healthy controls were interviewed for exploring the impact of bracing on the perception of stress. A self-administrated questionnaire was used. The first part of the questionnaire included questions on demographic, socio-economic characteristics, on scoliosis and brace treatment and the second part included the Piers- Harris scale. Data were analyzed with the SPSS/PC+software using descriptive statistics, Pearson correlation and the non-parametric Mann-Whitney U test. Statistical significance was set at P=0.05 or less. Results The analysis of the results revealed that scoliosis subjects experienced more stress (P=0.0389) in comparison to the subjects in the control group. Conclusions A 5% of the scoliosis subjects had some opportunities to discuss their problems with health professionals, while 90% of them stated that they wanted to have opportunities to do this.

Keywords: Scoliosis, Boston brace, perception, stress