Findings from this review suggest surgery improves HRQL in patients with adult scoliosis at a minimum 2 year follow-up. However, these findings are based on limited data of fair to good quality which needs to be taken into consideration when interpreting the results and highlights the need for additional high quality prospective studies.

BackgroundProspective data on health-related quality of life in patients with idiopathic scoliosis treated surgically as adults is needed. We compared preoperative and 1- and 2-year follow-up data in surgically treated adults with idiopathic scoliosis with juvenile or adolescent onset. Results were compared to untreated adults with scoliosis and population normative data.MethodsA comparison of preoperative and 1- and 2-year follow-up data of 75 adults surgically treated for idiopathic scoliosis at a mean age of 28 years (range 18 to 69) from a prospective national register study, as well as a comparison with age- and sex-matched data from 75 untreated adults with less severe scoliosis and 75 adults without scoliosis, was made. Outcome measures were EuroQol-5 dimensions (EQ-5D) and Scoliosis Research Society (SRS)-22r questionnaire.ResultsIn the surgically treated, EQ-5D and SRS-22r scores had statistically significant improvements at both 1- and 2-year follow-ups (all p  < 0.015). The effect size of surgery on EQ-5D at 1-year follow-up was large (r = −0.54) and small-medium (r = −0.20) at 2-year follow-up. The effect size of surgery on SRS-22r outcomes was medium-large at 1- and 2-year follow-ups (r = −0.43 and r = −0.42 respectively). At the 2-year follow-up, the EQ-5D score and the SRS-22r subscore were similar to the untreated scoliosis group (p = 0.56 and p = 0.91 respectively), but lower than those in the adults without scoliosis (p < 0.001 for both comparisons).ConclusionsAdults with idiopathic scoliosis experience an increase in health-related quality of life following surgery at 2-year follow-up, approaching the health-related quality of life of untreated individuals with less severe scoliosis, but remain lower than normative population data.