Sitting postural control in children with Cerebral palsy: concurrent validity of Trunk Impariement Scale

Abstract

We know the importance of assessing postural control in children with cerebral palsy (CP), including assessments in the sitting posture, as a means of identifying the characteristics of the trunk and alignment of body segments and maintaining posture, as well as the changes as treatment results. The force platforms provide reliable data for postural control, however, these devices are expensive and not very portable. Thus developed the Trunk Impairment Scale (TIS), was originally designed to evaluate the performance of trunk control in hemiplegic patients after stroke. Recently it has gained wide inter-observer reliability and intra-observer when used in children with CP. However, no studies in the literature about its validity in assessing children with CP. Therefore, the objective of this study is to investigate the concurrent validity of the Trunk Impairment Scale in 21 children diagnosed with cerebral palsy in GMFCS levels I through III by comparing the results with the gold standards that are the force platform and the size of the Gross Motor sitting Function Measure (GMFM). To obtain the scores of the TIS will need to evaluate 21 children in 17 activities reordered into sub-scales of static balance, dynamic balance, and coordination. The size of the sitting GMFM consists of 20 evaluation items and sums the scores of each item. For the force platform, will be held three collections of 20 seconds with the child sitting on it, without the support of feet, eyes open, fixed to a toy at eye level, with a rest period of 120 seconds between each them. The variables are amplitude, sway area, and velocity of the center of pressure. The descriptive results are obtained by calculating the mean and standard deviation. To study the correlation between quantitative variables of postural control and GMFM scores and TIS will be used correlation coefficients and logistic regression tests to verify the consistency of the results brought by assessment of the scales and force platform. So hopefully a positive relationship between the final scores of the GMFM and TIS, a negative end of the TIS score, and the outcome of platafoma force. The higher scores of GMFM emenores TIS and the results of the force platform, the better the child's postural control.(AU)