ROLE OF EXERCISES IN IMPROVING STATIC, DYNAMIC AND FUNCTIONAL BALANCE IN CEREBRAL PALSY

Abstract

AIM
To rule out the effectiveness and essence of exercise interventions
for improving static, dynamic and functional balance in Cerebral
Palsy (CP) patients
METHOD
American Academy of Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine
(AACPDM) guidelines was used to formulate the review. Six
databases were searched (Pub Med, Google scholar, Cochrane,
CINAH, PEDro, Scopus ) using a total number of 28 studies reporting
13 exercise protocols with functional, static and dynamic postural
controls
RESULTS
Five protocols received moderate level of evidence where Treadmill
training with little or no body support, Hippotherapy, Gross motor
training, Trunk-targeted training, reactive balance training. Six treatment
protocols had shown weak or conflicting evidences such as
Neuro-Developmental Therapy (NDT), Hippotherapy simulators,
Electrical stimulation usually know as Functional Electrical Stimulation
(FES), treadmill training with full or partial body weight support,
visual biofeedback (using mirror) and virtual reality.
CONCLUSION
The therapeutic exercise based treatment to improve the overall
balance of CP children has remarkably increased since last
decade. More studies are suggested to be conducted in order to
establish a strong relation between intervention and the outcomes
on postural controls. Moreover, future researches must rule out the
outliers by standardizing the protocols that are lacking in present
studies.

KEYWORDS
Cerebral Palsy, Postural Control, Functional Balance, NDT, BWSTT,
Hippotherapy, FES.