What is scoliosis surgery?
Treats selected spinal curves and imbalance when progression, pain, function, or neurologic compromise warrants correction. Dr. Merola plans correction from standing full-spine imaging and may use posterior, anterior, or combined techniques with implants and fusion across the levels that require correction.
Conditions it treats
Am I a candidate?
Candidacy depends on curve type and progression, balance, symptoms, age, bone health, prior surgery, and whether nonoperative care can maintain acceptable function.
How the diagnosis and surgical level are confirmed
Scoliosis is a three-dimensional curve, and the operative question differs between a growing patient and an adult with degeneration or prior treatment. Standing images assess pattern, flexibility, progression, balance, and skeletal maturity when relevant. The evaluation also separates symptoms from focal stenosis, hip disease, and other sources. Prior films establish whether a curve is changing rather than relying on one measurement. Fusion levels and correction maneuvers balance the structural curve and alignment against preservation of useful mobile segments; stopping too short can leave poor balance, while extending fusion sacrifices motion. Hospital priorities include neurologic checks, breathing and walking, wound care, nausea control, and bowel recovery. Students may need shorter days and load limits; public-safety and manual work adds collision, lifting, and fall demands. The goal is a safe, proportionate correction rather than a perfectly straight spine. Residual curve, loss of motion, nonunion, implant problems, or adjacent degeneration can affect long-term function.
How Dr. Merola performs scoliosis surgery
Dr. Merola plans correction from standing full-spine imaging and may use posterior, anterior, or combined techniques with implants and fusion across the levels that require correction.
Recovery timeline and returning to work
Recovery includes hospital care, progressive walking, rehabilitation, and months of bone healing. Return to school, desk work, or physical work follows an individualized schedule.
Recovery at a glance
Ballpark milestones for a typical course. Your own timeline depends on the procedure, your health, your job, and what the operation finds.
| Phase | What most people experience |
|---|---|
| First days | Hospital phase: walking with the team, pain managed on a protocol, incision care taught before discharge. |
| Weeks 1 to 6 | Walking is the job. No bending, twisting, or lifting. Therapy for movement, not strength, at first. |
| Weeks 6 to 12 | Endurance rebuilds. Desk work typically returns; longer days phased in. |
| Months 3 to 6 | Conditional lifting progresses. Fusion checked on imaging before load increases. |
| Months 6 to 12 | Return to full activity for many, on the fusion's schedule, not the calendar's. |
Alternatives and related procedures
Observation, therapy, bracing in appropriate younger patients, targeted decompression, or limited fusion may be alternatives depending on the curve and symptoms.
Scoliosis Surgery risks and outcomes
Risks include infection, blood loss, neurologic injury, nonunion, implant complications, loss of correction, adjacent-segment problems, and further surgery.
Related spine procedures
Spinal Deformity Surgery
Corrects selected alignment problems through anterior, posterior, or combined reconstruction.
Compare procedure →Spinal Fracture Stabilization
Protects the spinal cord and restores stability or alignment after selected cervical, thoracic, or lumbar fractures.
Compare procedure →Spinal Implants
Explains how screws, rods, plates, cages, artificial discs, and other implants support a specific reconstruction.
Compare procedure →Adult scoliosis is not teenage scoliosis
The scoliosis of a fourteen-year-old and the scoliosis of a fifty-eight-year-old share a name and little else.
Adolescent curves are about growth and progression risk. Adult curves are about wear. The spine sags off-center over decades, discs collapse asymmetrically, facets grind, and the result is a coronal balance that drifts while the back aches. Many adults walk around with a moderate curve and no idea they have one, because nobody X-rayed them and it never hurt.
That matters for the surgery conversation. An adult realignment is not a school-screening follow-up. It is one of the bigger operations in the specialty, undertaken when the curve progresses, when the imbalance starts costing function, or when the pain generators can no longer be managed conservatively.
What realignment surgery actually tries to do
The goal is not a magazine spine. The goal is a spine that carries your head over your pelvis without spending muscle energy holding itself together.
Surgeons talk about sagittal balance, and the phrase matters: a spine balanced front-to-back costs less to stand and walk with than one that leans. Restoring that balance, over the levels that need it, is what buys durable relief. Straightness on the X-ray is a byproduct, not the target.
That is why the evaluation is unhurried: standing films, flexibility films, nerve studies when the legs are involved, bone quality, health factors, and an honest accounting of what the recovery demands of you. The operation is staged and planned level by level, and Dr. Merola explains the plan against your films before anything is scheduled. Questions welcome before decisions, that is the point of a consultation.
This is the kind of surgery New York patients travel for. His Park Slope and Manhattan offices see the referrals, and the deformity experience behind them is a specific focus of this practice.
The decision, honestly
Plenty of adult curves never need an operation. Therapy, conditioning, injections into the painful segment, and activity strategy carry many patients for years. The operative conversation earns its place when the curve keeps progressing, when imbalance is eroding walking tolerance, or when conservative care has genuinely run its course.
Because the recovery is real, the counseling is direct: what it will demand, what it can and cannot restore, what the risks are. Adults who do best are the ones who went in with their eyes open.
Living with the decision either way
Some curves get operated and some get watched, and both groups have to live with their spines afterward. Here is what each path honestly looks like.
The watched path is not neglect. It is therapy tuned to the curve's demands, conditioning that protects the balance you have, injections when a specific segment becomes the pain generator, and standing films on a schedule that catches progression before it catches you. Plenty of adults run on this program for decades. It fails honestly too: when walking tolerance keeps shrinking, everyone knows what the next conversation is.
The operated path trades a demanding recovery for a rebalanced spine. The patients who do best treat the first three months as a job: walking daily, following restrictions precisely, keeping the follow-up appointments that image the fusion. The patients who struggle are usually the ones who treated the operation as the finish line instead of the midpoint.
Both paths stay in relationship with the same surgeon over time. That continuity, films year over year, is how either decision stays the right one.
The numbers on your films, decoded
Cobb angle is the number every scoliosis patient learns, the degrees of the main curve. It matters, but it is one measurement of a three-dimensional structure, and it is not the one that predicts how you feel.
The measurements that matter more for symptoms are balance and level-by-level wear: where the head sits over the pelvis, which disc has collapsed asymmetrically, which facet is grinding. A 35-degree curve that is balanced and quiet often hurts less than a 25-degree curve that is collapsing forward onto one joint.
So when Dr. Merola reviews films, the degrees get stated and then immediately contextualized. Patients leave knowing their number, and more usefully, knowing what is actually generating their pain and what would change it.
Brooklyn and Manhattan patients bring him this problem regularly, and most of them do not end up in an operating room.
If any of this sounds like the pain you have been carrying around, call or email the office. Request an appointment and Dr. Merola will review your case himself.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know whether I need scoliosis surgery?
Candidacy depends on curve type and progression, balance, symptoms, age, bone health, prior surgery, and whether nonoperative care can maintain acceptable function. The decision follows a direct examination and review of imaging, symptoms, prior care, health, and functional limits.
What happens during scoliosis surgery?
Dr. Merola plans correction from standing full-spine imaging and may use posterior, anterior, or combined techniques with implants and fusion across the levels that require correction. The exact levels and approach are individualized, and Dr. Merola performs the operation personally.
How long is recovery after scoliosis surgery?
Recovery includes hospital care, progressive walking, rehabilitation, and months of bone healing. Return to school, desk work, or physical work follows an individualized schedule. Timing still varies with the approach, levels treated, healing, neurologic findings, and job demands.
What are the alternatives to scoliosis surgery?
Observation, therapy, bracing in appropriate younger patients, targeted decompression, or limited fusion may be alternatives depending on the curve and symptoms. Non-surgical care may remain reasonable when the examination and imaging support it.
What risks should I understand before scoliosis surgery?
Risks include infection, blood loss, neurologic injury, nonunion, implant complications, loss of correction, adjacent-segment problems, and further surgery. Symptoms may improve incompletely, and additional care or surgery may be needed. No result is guaranteed.
Is it worth getting surgery for scoliosis as an adult?
For pain or progression that is shrinking your function, realignment can give years back. For a curve that is stable and tolerable, watchful conservative care is often the better trade. Adult scoliosis surgery is a big operation, and the decision deserves a surgeon who is comfortable saying not yet.
How risky is surgery for scoliosis?
The risks are the familiar spine-surgery set, infection, bleeding, neurologic injury, and incomplete correction or healing, with the stakes higher because the operations are longer. Spinal-cord monitoring is used during the operation precisely to protect the cord while the spine is being corrected.
Can scoliosis surgery cause paralysis?
Neurologic injury, including paralysis, is a recognized risk of deformity correction. It is also the risk that intraoperative spinal-cord monitoring and staged correction are specifically designed to protect against. The honest framing is: rare, taken seriously, never zero.
Additional reading
Trusted sources for going deeper. These sites are independent of the practice.
- MedlinePlus.Spine Injuries and Disorders. MedlinePlus.
Independent patient information related to this procedure or the conditions it treats.
- American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, OrthoInfo.Spinal Fusion. American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, OrthoInfo.
Independent patient information related to this procedure or the conditions it treats.
References
- Spine Injuries and Disorders. MedlinePlus. https://medlineplus.gov/spineinjuriesanddisorders.html
- Spinal Fusion. American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, OrthoInfo. https://orthoinfo.aaos.org/en/treatment/spinal-fusion/
Educational content prepared July 2026, reviewed October 2026 by Andrew A. Merola, MD. This page is educational and does not create a doctor-patient relationship.