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The research group of the Musculoskeletal System and Sports of the University of Murcia, led by Professor Fernando Santonja Medina, has carried out several studies to know in depth the gross motor function in children affected by cerebral palsy.
Gross motor function is the ability of small children to move, move and maintain balance.
Thus this study starts from a project whose general objective is to find the relation that exists between the position that acquires the column in its curves and its adaptation to the different functions that the people perform.
In collaboration with this group, doctoral José Manuel Sanz Mengíbar has discovered that children who suffer from this disorder have limited gross motor function and affected from the beginning, therefore their mobility is reduced.
Research has been carried out measuring the curvatures of the spine to understand how it develops in a healthy way, understanding what happens in the column of children suffering from cerebral palsy.
This research has resulted in two articles, in the first, published in the journal Pediatric Physical Therapy, thanks to an analysis of gait, made with an apparatus capable of constructing a three-dimensional computer model while the subject is walking, children have been classified affected by cerebral palsy in three levels attending to their gross motor function.
In the first level are the children who, despite suffering from this disorder, are able to walk bipedal on their own;
in the second there are children who are only able to walk inside the house because they need to lean on the walls;
and finally, the third level consists of children who need a walker to help them walk, since they are only able to do so by leaning on their hands.
Sanz points out that the result of this study has been very positive because it has shown that the lumbar spine of each child has a specific position, which is fundamental to know in the face of therapy, whose objective is to modify that column to improve the mobility of the patient .
Another of the work done by the group, recently published in the Journal of Sports Medicine and Physical Fitness, focuses on children gymnasts whose gross motor function is amplified, as they have the ability to walk on the hands.
The objective of the study is, through the use of an inclinometer (apparatus that measures static angles) to understand how the spine is modified to be able to perform a specific function, either reduced or increased.
The research group of the UMU has collaborated with a group of the University of Munich, and at the moment it continues investigating in this line from two slopes.
One of them is focused on the development of the spine from the time children are born to five years of age, since it is the most unknown period so far in this field despite the fact that they learn such concrete functions such as crawling, sitting or standing.
And the other side, more therapeutic, is focused on how physiotherapy can affect the spine to improve the gross motor function of children with cerebral palsy.
Source: Universidad de Murcia
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