Quantitative postural analysis and postural control of children with low vision and blindness

Abstract

The visual deficiency includes blindness (BL) and low vision (LV), estimated that worldwide more than 161 million people with disabilities are visual while 124 million have low vision and 37 million were blind. In Brazil, according to IBGE, the difficulty is continuing to see higher incidence of disability. The stimuli from the vision provides important experience in the motor development of children, experiences that result in structural development of the body. Thus, the lack of these stimuli in children with visual impairments, the formation of the temporal image, the image space and motor development occur in a more static and less understood than for the child who has normal vision. More static because few reactions are evoked, not the child explores the environment and less understandable because the blind child is deprived of a variety of experience that sight permits. In an attempt to know and understand the consequences of failure or lack of vision several studies have evaluated the static balance and posture of individuals with visual impairments, but the means used for evaluation of static posture were not reliable or reproducible and were only checked the effects of blindness, and were not seen if the changes found postural increase with severity of visual deficiency. In this issue, the purpose of this study is to assess quantitatively by means of photogrammetry changes posture, mobility and flexibility present in children with blindness and low vision and compare the data of these parameters to the data of normal children. The postural analysis will be done using the SAPo* v. 0.63 ® software and references markers previously placed on bone. The following segments are analyzed: head, shoulder, scapula, thoracic spine, lumbar spine, pelvis, lateral deviation of the spine, knee and ankle. The displacement antero-posterior (A/P) and latero-lateral (L/L) evaluations of the corporal gravity center in the static biped posture will be done using a force plate EMG System. It will also be considered the test of the 3rd finger to the ground, the printing plant and the active and passive goniometry of the hip and shoulder. Assumptions: (i) children with disabilities have more visual postural changes, oscillation of the center of pressure, lack of flexibility and reduction of the range of motion when compared to normal children, (ii) these changes are most obvious is the more severe the disability. (AU)