The prevalence of scoliosis in spina bifida subpopulations: a systematic review

Prevalence of scoliosis within spina bifida subpopulations is important for diagnostics and therapeutic purposes. This review determined the prevalence of scoliosis within spina bifida subpopulations by means of a systematic literature review by using the following databases: Medline-Pubmed, Embase, Cochrane and Pedro. All Dutch- and English-written literature using the MESH-terms: "Spinal Dysraphism", "Neural Tube Defects", "Scoliosis" was analysed using the exclusion criteria: animal studies, case reports, studies regarding the prevalence of spina bifida among patients with scoliosis, studies with inclusion of patients with scoliosis 10°, studies without an own study group, articles comprising the same patient group as another article, neural tube defects besides spina bifida and articles without specification of spina bifida subtype. It resulted in six articles, two concerning diastematomyelia (103 patients, 82 females and 21 males), four about myelomeningocele (479 patients, 283 females and 196 males) with an overall weighted prevalence of scoliosis (20° Cobb angle cut off) of 44.4% and 52.5% respectively. It can be concluded that most studies have a lot of methodological flaws so there is a need for further research with standardisation of data collection to allow comparison of different data. Address correspondence to: Arne Heyns, Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, University Hospitals Leuven, Belgium, Herestraat 49, 3000 Leuven. Fax: 016 34 21 84. Tel: +324 96 36 45 39, email: arne.heyns@uzleuven.be Competing interests: none of the authors has any competing interest. Funding source: The research had no specific support. Financial disclosure statement: The authors have no financial relationships relevant to this article to disclose. Conflict of interest statement: The authors have no conflicts of interest relevant to this article to disclose. Presentations: the article will be presented at the upcoming ESPRM congress 2018 in Vilnius. Copyright © 2018 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.

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