18 yo Benjamin from Baton Rouge, LA straightened out today with his double thoracic adolescent idiopathic scoliosis

Well it’s been a little while since I have blogged, but I have a quick minute right now, so I will put up a quick note.  We had a real nice day today helping Benjamin, an 18 yo young man from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Ben has had a rapidly progressing double thoracic scoliosis which has gone to over 60 degrees in the lower thoracic, and upper 50’s in the upper thoracic with a very visible back hump.  His deformity with large thoracic hump has become very visible just within last couple years.  Mom was showing me a photo of his back from 3 years ago which looked pretty normal!

His surgery today went great.  Fusion is from T2-L1 with multiple osteotomies to help free up his stiff upper thoracic curve. We got a very nice correction, with no blood transfusions.  He is now with his family up on the third floor at Duke Raleigh Hospital resting comfortably with mom and dad.

I saw a 14 yo young man yesterday with Marfan’s Syndrome, or Marfanoid-like connective tissue disorder with a thoracolumbar scoliosis measuring in the 30’s.  His dad and his sister both have the same syndrome.  We are going to keep an eye on his curve for now.  He also had some C1-C2 instability noted, which we saw on his flex/ex cervical spine X-Rays, which goes along with this syndrome as well.  His dad had a thoracic aneurism dissection.  This patient has a dilated aorta which is being watched.

I will be writing a blog very soon on Heather C — at her request.  She is a cool 28 yo young lady with a complex scoliosis history.  For now, we just want to wish her “get well soon” as she heads home from the hospital today after her anterior/posterior  L5S1 ALIF, posterior T10-Iliac wing instrumentation and fusion with special double “Ken Truss Technique”  — a new technique we developed for revision scoliosis surgery, with the help from Ken Hey, aeronautical engineer (and my brother), and NC State Dept of Mechanical Engineering Biomechanics lab with Professor Andre Mazzoleni, with our finite element analysis computer modeling project.

Dr. Lloyd Hey
Hey Clinic for Scoliosis and Spine Surgery
http://www.heyclinic.com