Research Award Details

Brief summary description of your project, include what worked and what did not work.

We sought to evaluate Health Mindset and how it related to compliance with brace wear and Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL) assessments in the treatment of patients with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS). Patients undergoing brace treatment for AIS were given the SRS-30 as well as a Health Mindset survey at each visit. Our hypothesis was that patients with a fixed mindset were more likely to have lower hours of brace wear as compared to patients with a growth mindset. We did not find this correlation. However, we demonstrated that mindset can influence how individuals perceive their HRQoL. We demonstrated that adolescents with a fixed mindset have worse health related quality of life scores along with significantly higher perceptions of pain and worsened perceptions of physical appearance as compared to those with a growth mindset.

Was the primary outcome measure of success reached?

Although we were not able to find a correlation with hours of brace wear and health mindset, we were able to correlate their SRS 30 HRQoL scores with mindset. This provides us a potential area for intervention as studies in other areas have demonstrated that mindset is malleable and can be changed with simple interventions.

Future plans, presentations or publications as a result of this grant.

We are continuing to follow our patients via SRS-30 and Health Mindset surveys as each visit. We will be able to examine whether mindset changes throughout their course of treatment. We have also started monitoring our patients' compliance with brace wear via sensors in the brace as opposed to self-reporting. We hypothesize that there will be an increased self-reporting bias in children who have a fixed mindset. Finally, we have started working on developing an app to target mindset in children with AIS