New Cerebral Palsy Therapy Shows Promise
A physical
therapy borrowed by Alabama researchers from therapists who work with adult
stroke victims shows great promise in children with cerebral palsy.
Known as "constraint-induced
movement therapy," researchers at the University of Alabama in Birmingham
have conducted the first randomized, controlled trial of its kind conducted
on children with cerebral palsy, according to the Feb. 2 issue of the journal
Pediatrics.
Children with
CP exhibit an inability to control their muscles as a result of damage
to the region of the brain that controls muscle tone.
The result often
renders children unable to perform seemingly simple everyday tasks such
as picking up a cup, eating finger foods or reaching out to be picked up
by a parent.
Traditional
therapies for children with CP do little to restore motor skills. Restraint
therapy puts the child's strongest arm in a restraint, a cast, for three
weeks, while he is given six hours of therapy a day for those three weeks
on the weaker arm to develop motor skills.
The Alabama
researchers found that all treated children in their study outperformed
the children in conventional therapy across all measures of success, including
how well they could move their arms post-therapy and their ability to do
new tasks during research and at home with their families.
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