The effectiveness of ankle foot orthosis on gait in children with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy

Abstract

Introduction: Cerebral palsy is a life lasting disability and is one of the most expensive diseases. CP is defined as a non-progressive, chronic, involuntary movement disorder secondary to an injury or lesion of the immature brain. The lesion usually occurs prenatally on prenatally: only about 10 per cent of the lesions are of postnatal origin. In most patients, a specific cause is not identified. Orthotic management is a widely utilized method of treatment in children with CP due to its conservative nature. Orthosis continue to have an important role in many therapeutic regimens for children with CP. However; there have been differences in design variants of Orthosis prescribed for the common problem of Spastic Cerebral Palsy. Three AFO configurations frequently prescribed for children with spastic cerebral palsy they are Hinged AFO (HAFO), the Posterior leaf spring (PLS AFO), and the Solid AFO (SAFO). Methods: Thirty subjects with Spasticdieplegic Cerebral palsy aged from 5-15 years with (male=20 and female=16) chosen through randomized sampling and taken in this study. The Selected subjects underwent indicated AFOs (SAFO, PLSAFO, HAFO,). Each intervention was given up to three months with wearing schedule 6-12 hours per day. Results: Results shows a significant improvement in Gait Parameters and i.e. Step length (p<0.020), stride length (p<0.003), cadence (p<0.005), Velocity (p<0.002), but not significant difference in comparison between SAFO, PLSAFO and HAFO. Conclusion: The findings of the study support the hypothesis that there were significant differences between the three design variants of AFO in improving gait parameters in subject with spasticdieplegic Cerebral Palsy.