Physical Therapy Interventions For Children Research Articles

Management of Pediatric Patients with Acute Poliomyelitis

Poliomyelitis is still endemic in developing countries and continues to account for a significant source of disability in childhood. The purpose of this paper is to describe the clinical signs, symptoms, status, rehabilitation techniques, and role of timely and correct physical therapy intervention for children with acute poliomyelitis based on a program offered at the Poliomyelitis Clinic in the Department of Paediatrics, Civil Hospital Karachi, Pakistan. We followed 39 children with acute poliomyelitis who were identified in 1990 and had received physical therapy which included heat therapy, active and passive exercises, electrical muscle stimulation, and orthotic fitting. The lower limb was involved in the majority of these children. Deformities noted in 70% of the children included foot drop and knee hyperextension. Orthoses, chiefly knee-ankle-foot orthoses (KAFOs) and ankle-foot orthoses (AFOs), were used to align the joints properly. On initial presentation, 48% could not sit with support. Among those who could not sit with support after intervention with physical therapy, 43% started to walk without support, 16% walked with support, and another 43% stood without support. Although we did not follow a control group who did not receive physical therapy, our impressions of the children's outcome with intervention lead us to advocate for timely rehabilitation such as that provided by the physical therapy program at our facility for children with acute poliomyelitis

A review of therapeutic intervention research on gross and fine motor progress in young children with cerebral palsy.

Recently, perhaps due to increased societal demands for accountability, early intervention programming for handicapped infants and young children has been questioned. Therapeutic intervention provided through occupational and/or physical therapy has been increasingly implemented in habilitation settings for children diagnosed as having cerebral palsy, although research justifying this increase is inconclusive. This review presents a comprehensive evaluation of 18 studies that evaluated early occupational and/or physical therapy intervention for children with cerebral palsy. An analysis of these studies revealed that as research paradigms become more rigorous, support for therapeutic intervention effectiveness decreases. This finding was explained in light of the currently inadequate levels of technology relating to instrumentation and the manipulation of the many variables that have been suggested to affect therapeutic intervention effectiveness.