Intervention effect of Virtual Reality on body sway in different conditions of stability of the base of support and gait spatio-temporal parameters in children with Cerebral Palsy.

Abstract

Cerebral Palsy (CP) is a group of non-progressive disorder of the immature brain causing impairment of movement and posture. Thus, maintaining the bipedal posture is considered a major challenge for these children, which can be cited as major constraints deficits in postural control and gait. The postural control system is responsible for maintaining the stability and body orientation within the base of support limits, therefore, the adaptive capacity of that system forward to everyday disorders is of great importance to functionality. In this sense, new forms of therapy have been developed and directed the rehabilitation of children with CP, including virtual reality (VR), capable of providing multi-sensory stimuli in a variable environment, tasks goal-directed and repetition, promoting learning strategies adaptive postural control. In view of the above, the goal of this study is to verify the effect of a therapeutic intervention program based on RV on body sway in different conditions of stability of the support base and spatiotemporal parameters of gait in children with CP. This is a randomized controlled clinical trial and blind assessment of longitudinal character and clinical objectives. Participate in the study children between 5 and 12 years with a diagnosis of CP hemiparetic and spastic, GMFCS levels I and II. The children will undergo complete medical history will be evaluated and body sway in standing position in the different conditions of stability (feet parallel and rigid and malleable surface, tandem, semi-tandem) and spatiotemporal gait parameters. One will use the Xbox console with Kinect " and four commercially available games. The intervention will be performed for eight consecutive weeks, twice per week, for 45 minutes each. For the statistical analysis will be used to analysis by intention to treat. The Shapiro-Wilk test will be applied to verify the distribution of the data. For the difference in analysis between the groups before and after the intervention protocol, if the data is parametric, the mixed design ANOVA Two Way will be used. specific tests compared to the number of factors with the necessary statistical adjustments will be used. For all analyzes, the significance level of 5% will be adopted. It is believed that the use of VR as a therapeutic resource to be able to influence the functionality of the condition of these children, reflecting on adaptability in body sway the demands of tandem and semi-tandem postures and soft surface and the spatio-temporal gait variables. (AU)