Liu Minxia
mllmx@msn.com
A SHENZHEN hospital, with the support of the municipal education bureau and a foundation, set up China’s first scoliosis correction center Monday, aiming to provide scoliosis screenings for all of the students in the city.
Shenzhen No. 2 People’s Hospital, which has been running a scoliosis screening project since September 2013, examined more than 110,000 students from 127 schools in Futian, Nanshan, Luohu and Longgang districts last year, and found that 1,419 of them needed treatment and 23 of them needed surgery.
The hospital established the center to extend the project to all schools in the city this year.
Scoliosis, a medical condition in which a person’s spine has a sideways curve, is often found in teenagers. The rate of Shenzhen teenagers having the problem is higher than the global average of 2 to 3 percent, the hospital’s project found.
“There are many causes of scoliosis, which develops mostly in the preteen and teen years,” said Yan Bin, director of the hospital’s spinal surgery department. “Girls are at a higher risk of having the problem than boys.”
Children without a family history of the disorder are less likely to get it and posture correction is an adequate treatment, he said.
Mild scoliosis may change the shape of a person’s spine, but more serious scoliosis can cause pain or even affect heart and lung function, he said.
Wang Yulong, director of the hospital’s rehabilitation department, said that the hospital is planning to launch a scoliosis correction service app that allows patients to access services more conveniently. The treatment usually lasts three months, Wang said.
Many Western countries started scoliosis screening 40 years ago, and Hong Kong started 30 years ago. Several Shenzhen hospitals are paying attention to this and have started offering screenings in recent years.
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