A long-term study done on the quality of life in patients with idiopathic scoliosis who chose surgery with Harrington rods done at the Klinik und Poliklinik für Allgemeine Orthopädie des Universitätsklinikums in Münster, Germany showed that those patients who were corrected with Harrington Rod surgery were evaluated for their degree of deformity, quality of life, disability and back pain an average of 16.7 years after their surgery.
The study showed that while only 6% complained of chronic back pain the scored significantly lower than the baseline on psychological scale and most importantly a full 40 % of patients who underwent scoliosis surgery in their youth were legally defined as severely handicapped persons.