Can congenital scoliosis become painful in adults? Can it be fixed?

At Hey Clinic, we see quite a few young children with congenital scoliosis, some of whom have other congenital abnormalities like heart disease, kidney disease, or other extremity or neurologic abnormalities.  For many children, congenital scoliosis is not a big deal -- they are often stable, with good spinal balance and often don't progress during growth and/or adulthood.  However, there is a subset of patients with congenital scoliosis who end up having significant curve progression, and even neurologic weakness issues in the case of some cases of congenital kyphosis. There is also another group that does fine during childhood, but the misalignment of their spine especially in the lumbar area causes premature disc degeneration, and facet degeneration and can lead to significant pain, and troubles with quality of life and activities of daily living.  Yesterday we saw a young lady back for her 1 year postop visit who had such a problem  In the attached YouTube video below, she briefly tells her story on how she suffered more and more as an adult, and now is doing very well after having the lumbar spinal stenosis (nerve pinching) released using laminectomies, and her congenital scoliosis angulation corrected using osteotomies (bone wedges) and then stabilized with the hardware and bone graft.  She reports that she now has no pain, works full-time running a CVS store, is raising her family, and exercising regularly --- a marked improvement from last year when her quality of life was becoming unbearable!  --- Dr. Lloyd Hey Hey Clinic for Scoliosis and Spine Surgery http://www.heyclinic.com