7 -         Conclusion

Evidence-Based treatment (and in particular, for what is our interest, rehabilitation and orthopaedic conservative treatment) for spinal deformities already has some good bases,^{72,95,105,106,122,179} even if not the scientifically strongest ones, that are universally defined as proofs coming from randomised controlled trials (RCTs), and subsequently from large observational studies regarding treatments based on the results of those RCTs.

The practice of medicine in these cases requires, as is done today (and presumably will be for a long time in the future due to the particularity of the field of growing age, which requires years to gather final data on treatments), that effort are based on EBM but also related to the preferences of patients, professionals and society where they live. This is perfectly in accordance with the definition of Evidence-Based Clinical Practice but also with what is happening in other fields, even where it is more a matter of molecule and chemistry than of human behaviors and child development.

ISICO was born:

-        To follow the EBM pathways that will be traced by improvements in scientific knowledge;

-        To directly develop new evidence, open new avenues to treatment, and shape the existing ones according to its ethical principles;

-        To spread this knowledge (i.e., the approach), as much as possible, to professionals, industry, society and patients in Italy and abroad.

Where there will be people sharing the same vision and philosophy of life, this proliferation of knowledge could become a collaboration with which to pursue common ways of working and collecting data for research and other steps forward.

In this booklet readers have found the concepts that ISICO applies:

-        One, called SEAS (Scientific Exercises Approach to Scoliosis), is old but continuously under development for nearly 30 years regarding exercises to prevent evolution and bracing, or to help orthosis work and avoid its side effects, thus increasing the overall quality of treatment;

-        Another, called SPoRT (Symmetric, Patient-oriented, Rigid Three-dimensional, active bracing) is a new breakthrough that research has shown to be of interest;

-        The others have no names, but they exist, together with the previous ones, within a unifying conceptual framework that is the ISICO rehabilitation approach to spinal deformities, fully based on our principles: efficacy, efficiency, research, innovation, acceptability, humanity, teamwork, transparency, organisation, appropriateness and reliability of treatments.

Today, we have new instruments such as SOSORT, the newly established international scientific Society on Scoliosis Orthopaedic and Rehabilitation Treatment, and its journal, Scoliosis: in recent years this has given rise to a sudden increase in research around the world, to which ISICO has given its full collaboration. Looking at all this, in our opinion the best conclusion of this booklet can be a simple statement: