Recent advances in the treatment of painful adult scoliosis.

Pain is the major cause for surgical intervention in adults with scoliosis and it accounts for 65% of cases. With improved techniques of surgery, including anterior approaches, and better diagnostic methods, including the use of diskography, the satisfactory results of surgical correction have improved from 65-75% to 85-90% of the reported cases. Anterior instrumentation has resulted in decreased pseudarthrosis rates and reduction of lumbar lordosis deformities.