The validity of lenke criteria for defining structural proximal thoracic curves in patients with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis

Retrospective series. To delineate the efficiency of using Lenke criteria during the decision of whether to include the proximal thoracic curve into instrumented fusion or not in patients with adolescent idiopathic scoliosis (AIS) treated with posterior translational instrumentation. Lenke and colleagues classified the curves of patients with AIS and assigned the term "structural" or "nonstructural" to each curve. However, there is still not much consensus on the definition of structural proximal thoracic curve, and structurality criteria for proximal thoracic curve have not been validated yet. Inclusion criteria were: (1) patients with AIS treated with a posterior translational instrumentation system and older than 10 years; (2) nonstructural upper thoracic curves (side bending Cobb 0.