 Now, do all cases of scoliosis require surgeries? There are specific criteria now for when we operate on scoliosis, there is a way of measuring scoliosis and to cut a long story short, we give it an angle, we say that it is a 10 degree scoliosis or a 20 degree curve or a 100 degree curve, 10 degree curves are very small curves, 100 degree, 120 degrees are very severe curves. So, the rule here is that we do not generally operate on children with less than 40 degree of scoliosis. If the child is having up to 10 degrees of scoliosis is taken as a normal variation, so 5 degree, 10 degree is nothing. 2, if it is between 10 to 30, 40 degrees, we give them a brace, that is we create a custom made brace for them and put pressure points at different areas so that we can try and restrict the deformity from progressing and even reduce the amount of curve if possible. A fundamental principle you should understand here is younger the child, the greater the chance of the scoliosis progressing, so it is very important to pick them up very early. There is a popular myth that one shouldn't be operating on children on a young born, we should be operating only once in achieved maturity and that is a totally wrong concept. We operate on even children who are 3 years, 4 years of age and it is not the age of the child that matters, it is the size of the bone and whether it can hold our implants and how large the curve is. Any curve above 40 degrees in a young child where there is growth potential, one has to suggest a surgery for such a child because it leads to severe deformity as they reach their final growth spurt. In a girl that's final growth spurt is between 12 and 15 years of age and in a boy it is between 14 and 17 years of age, that's when the maximum growth spurt happens and if their curve is already, for example if the curve is already 40 degrees in a 10 year old child that means it's going to shoot up to maybe 70, 80 or 100 degrees, why wait till 100 degree curve which is very difficult to correct, why you can actually easily correct a 40, 50 degree curve at the age of 10. It is a very good age at between 12 to 13 to operate, it's the spine is almost grown fully, fusing those spines and fixing it with screws doesn't affect their growth, they don't lose their growth potential. So the message here is pick them up early, if their curve is more than 40 degrees we operate less than 40 degrees, we don't operate.