The surgical treatment of spinal deformities in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, University Medical School of Pécs, Hungary: history and development.
Since its foundation in 1966, a great deal of attention has been paid to the treatment of spinal deformities, especially idiopathic scoliosis, in the Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Medical School of University, Pécs. The authors compared the results of three different surgical methods (modified Hibbs, Harrington, Cotrel-Dubousset) on 171 patients between 1966 and 1992. The average follow-up period was between 2 and 13.2 years. In cases in which the modified Hibbs procedure was used we achieved a 26% correction, in the Harrington cases we achieved a 43.9% correction, and the loss of correction was 100% after the Hibbs operation and 18% after the Harrington operation in the follow-up period. In cases of Cotrel-Dubousset Instrumentation we achieved about 70% correction, but the follow-up period was too short (2 years) to evaluate the loss of correction in these cases.