MONTREAL – Ste. Justine Hospital celebrated a victory on Tuesday. Its chair in spinal biomechanics received enough funding to last another five years, meaning hundreds of young patients suffering from scoliosis will get a new lease on life.
Three years ago, 16-year-old Caroline Villeneuve was diagnosed with a severe case of scoliosis and was forced to wear a brace on her back for nine months but that didn’t help. “I was in so much pain and I was like, I don’t want to live the rest of my life this way,” she told Global News.
When doctors at the Ste. Justine Hospital told her that she would need surgery, she admitted that at first she was scared.
“You’re working in close proximity to the spinal cord so there’s a small risk there,” Dr. Stefan Parent, the orthopedic surgeon who operated on Caroline explained. “She had over 50 degrees of deformity, we had tried bracing but that failed in her case.”
Doctors had to fuse 10 vertebrae together, which means she may face more surgeries in the future as she grows.
“For younger patients that are now in our clinics we’re trying to find new ways to improve their quality of life without doing a fusion.”
The doctors from Ste. Justine are working with researchers from the Ecole Polytechnique to find new, less invasive ways to correct scoliosis.
“We’re using engineering tools to optimize the surgical strategies,” said Polytechnique professor Carl-Eric Aubin.
Those strategies will pay off for patients like 10-year-old Jordan Lemay, who hasn’t yet had surgery.
His dad, Stephane Lemay, said he’s scared because the surgery by itself has a “one in a thousand chance that something could go wrong and he could lose the use of his legs.”
Jordan, on the other hand, is a bit more optimistic. He says he can’t wait to be liberated from his scoliosis and more importantly, he can’t wait for the constant pain to stop.
As for Caroline, she believes the future is bright after surgery. “I was almost excited for the surgery because it was really my deliverance from this hell I’d been in for so long.”
She even wrote a book, which is more of survival guide, to help others through their struggle with scoliosis.
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