Patient characteristics

Institutional Review Board approval of Strategic Support Force Medical Center was obtained for this study. Patients with progressive EOS treated with braces in our institution between June 2011 and July 2023 who met the following criteria were included. (1) The age of initial bracing was no more than 10 years old; (2) the minimum follow-up time was 4 years; (3) etiological diagnosis of congenital scoliosis (CS), idiopathic scoliosis (IS) with Cobb angle of 25° or more, or Cobb angle of no less than 20° with RVAD > 20°, or phase II rib-vertebra relationship; (4) patients never treated with spinal deformity surgery. Patients of nonprogressive idiopathic scoliosis, neuromuscular scoliosis and EOS of Syndromic scoliosis, such as Marfan syndrome, Klippel-Feil syndrome, etc., were excluded. Consistent with Scoliosis Research Society(SRS) criteria¹⁹, we defined improvement to be a decrease of more than 5° of the Cobb angle from brace initiation to the final control, stabilization to be a Cobb angle variation ± 5°, and failure to be an increase of more than 5°, Cobb > 45° at last control or at maturity, or a final need for surgery. Improved and stabilized patients were included in a simple success group. Thus, treatment outcome could be classified as success or failure.