Background: Adult spinal deformity (ASD) is mostly a progressive disease which usually leads to chronic pain. Due to increased prevalence in older people many patients suffer from comorbidities, which make conservative and surgical treatment even more complex.
Objective: This article provides an overview on the current conservative and surgical treatment options.
Material and methods: An extensive literature search was carried out via Medline plus an additional evaluation of the authors' personal experiences was performed.
Results: The current conservative and surgical treatments are outlined and potential risk factors and predictors which may lead to inferior clinical outcome are discussed.
Conclusion: Patients for whom even conservative treatment leads to success should be identified earlier and better. The surgical treatment ranges from minimally invasive decompression to multilevel fusions. Complications in large corrective interventions can be substantial but if the indications are correctly assessed, such complex surgical treatment has excellent clinical results in terms of pain and quality of life.
Keywords: Conservative treatment; Pain; Pathogenesis; Spine; Spondylodesis.