"Broadway Dreams - Teen Is Back Dancing After Scoliosis Surgery" - JoAnne Viviano
Back in February 2017, Mya Montgomery, received news that terrified her and threatened her dream of one day dancing professionally. Mya was told she had scoliosis, with a sideways curvature of 38 degrees near the top of her spine. The plastic-and-Velcro brace she wore around her torso for several months, only removing it to dance, didn’t help. By June, the curvature had become severe, measuring 49 degrees. After many sleepless nights, Mya’s mom, had discovered an experimental procedure that had shown promise in treating growing spines while preserving flexibility. Called vertebral body tethering, the technique uses a flexible cord to straighten curvatures as a child’s spine grows. The surgery involved placing several screws in the vertebrae along the curve line, said Baron Lonner, MD, professor of orthopaedics and pediatrics at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, who performed Mya’s surgery at The Mount Sinai Hospital. The bungee-like cord was linked to the screws, tensioned and screwed into another vertebra. The tethering technique gave Mya a less restrictive option from the standard procedure of spinal fusion, which uses steel rods to correct curvatures, stiffening the spine and limiting motion.
- Baron S. Lonner, MD, Professor, Orthopaedics, Pediatrics, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai