Rod fracture following growing rod surgery in a patient with early onset scoliosis: a case report

Abstract

Growing rod (GR) surgery has become widespread as a surgical treatment for early onset scoliosis and plays an important role in scoliosis treatment. GR surgery can be preserved spinal growth, but there are some reports of complications due to multiple surgeries and instrumentation failure. The case was 7 year and 11 months old boy, diagnosed as a Marfan like syndrome and syndromic scoliosis.

We performed conservative treatment as alternative cast and brace treatment 6 times but scoliosis got worse and GR surgery was performed at 7 years and 4 months. However, rod breakage occured after postoperative surgery at 6 months, so we performed revision surgery and inserted a cross rink between inline connector and distal screw.

GR surgery for early onset scoliosis is a meaningful treatment method in terms of both correction of scoliosis and growth preservation, but on the other hand, there are some reports of adverse effects, infections, and instrumentation failure due to multiple surgeries.

We performed GR surgery this time, but we experienced a case of rod breakage in the early postoperative period.