Idiopathic Scoliosis Prevalence Is 5 Times Less in Roma Than Greek Children and Adolescents

Panagiotis Smyrnis; Andreas Alexopoulos; Nick Sekouris; Vasilios Dimitropoulos; Giorgos Scarpas; Giorgos Vlatis; George Papadopoulos

doi:10.1016/j.jspd.2014.10.002

Idiopathic Scoliosis Prevalence Is 5 Times Less in Roma Than Greek Children and Adolescents

Spine Deform. 2015 May;3(3):253-262. doi: 10.1016/j.jspd.2014.10.002. Epub 2015 Apr 23.

Authors

Panagiotis Smyrnis¹, Andreas Alexopoulos², Nick Sekouris³, Vasilios Dimitropoulos⁴, Giorgos Scarpas⁵, Giorgos Vlatis⁵, George Papadopoulos⁶

Affiliations

¹ Spine Department, General Hospital "KAT", Athens, Greece.
² Orthopedic Department, General Hospital "I & A Grigoriou", Sparta, Greece.
³ Orthopedic Department, General Hospital "Athens Medical Centre", Margaritas 25, Elliniko, 16777 Athens, Greece. Electronic address: nick_sekouris@yahoo.com.
⁴ Orthopedic Department, Private Clinic of Larissa, Larissa, Greece.
⁵ Orthopedic Department, General Hospital "Asklipeio", Athens, Greece.
⁶ Department of Agriculture, University of Athens, Athens, Greece.

PMID: 27927467
DOI: 10.1016/j.jspd.2014.10.002

Abstract

Study design: Serial screening of Roma children for idiopathic scoliosis.

Objective: To confirm or reject the observation that the prevalence of scoliosis is reduced in the Roma population and possibly to explain it.

Materials and methods: The authors conducted serial screening for idiopathic scoliosis of 1,034 indigenous Roma children (542 boys and 492 girls), aged 4-18 years (857 children were aged 8-18 years) from 1997 to 2011. Age, height, weight, body mass index, years of schooling, and menarche for girls were recorded. Children were clinically examined for body asymmetries and a standing posteroanterior spinal radiograph was obtained in selected cases.

Results: Sixty Roma children (6%) had clinical humps. Single humps, according to location, were mostly benign and not related to progressive scoliotic curves. In children with right thoracic humps a left lumbar component could be overlooked. Of 60 children, only 4 (3 girls and 1 boy) with right thoracic and left lumbar or thoracolumbar humps had true progressive scoliotic curves with greater than 10° Cobb angle (prevalence rate, 0.35%). This is 5 times less than the rate of 1.5% in Greek children. One of these 4 children was young and had possible congenital scoliosis; the other 3 were early adolescents.

Conclusions: A substantial difference in the prevalence of scoliosis between Roma and Greek children was documented. The usual percentage of adolescent scoliosis found in the Greek population (approximately 15-17 cases/1,000 children) was not seen in this sample of Roma children.

Keywords: Adams test; Idiopathic scoliosis; Scoliometer; Scoliosis screening.