Radiological Outcomes and Complications of Vertical Expandable Titanium Rib Instrumentation in Congenital Scoliosis With or Without Rib Fusion: A Retrospective Study
Bibliographic record
Abstract
INTRODUCTION: In congenital anomalies of the thoracic spine, fusion in situ and hemi-epiphysiodesis are unsuitable surgical options, because three-dimensional thoracic deformity and insufficiency are uncorrectable. We aimed to evaluate the radiological outcome of vertical expandable titanium rib (VEPTR) application after follow-up in children with congenital scoliosis with or without rib fusion. METHODS: In our study, we included 58 patients with congenital scoliosis with or without fused ribs; all treated with VEPTR from 2005 to 2015 at our institute. There were 19 males and 39 females. For each patient, we collected information about age at the index surgery (VEPTR application) and the total number of VEPTR lengthening procedures. Also, Cobb angle, kyphotic angle, thoracic height, and spinal height were measured on preoperative radiographs, immediately post-operative, two years post-operative, and at final follow-up. RESULTS: The mean duration of follow-up was five years (range, 2-12 years). Twenty-eight patients had rib-to-pelvis type VEPTR, 20 patients had rib-to-rib type VEPTR, and 10 patients had a rib to pedicle/lamina type of VEPTR implant. Post-VEPTR, 63.8% of our patients reported one or more complications. The immediate post-VEPTR application showed that the mean Cobb angle decreased to 43.56° with a percentage change of 22.8% (p<0.001). The mean increase in thoracic height between VEPTR application surgery and final follow-up was 32 mm with a 19.3% increase (p<0.001). Similarly, the mean increase in the spinal height between the VEPTR application surgery and final follow-up was 46.6 mm, with a 23% increase (p<0.001). CONCLUSIONS: VEPTR instrumentation for congenital scoliosis, with or without rib fusion, successfully corrects the coronal Cobb angle in the majority of patients. It also allows the thoracic (T1-T12) and spinal (T1-S1) growth to approach normal for a particular age.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".