Harrington rod

The Harrington rod (or Harrington implant) is a stainless steel surgical device.

Historically, this rod was implanted along the spinal column to treat, among other conditions, a lateral or coronal-plane curvature of the spine, or scoliosis. Up to one million people had Harrington rods implanted for scoliosis between the early 1960s and the late 1990s.

The Harrington implant was developed in 1953 by Paul Harrington, a professor of orthopedic surgery at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.

Harrington rods were intended to provide a means to reduce the curvature and to provide more stability to a spinal fusion. Before the Harrington rod was invented, scoliosis patients had their spines fused without any instrumentation to support it; such fusions required many months in plaster casts, and large curvatures could progress despite fusion.