APPROACHING THE CEREBRAL PALSY, A NEW EVALUATION PROPOSAL FOR CHILDREN'S PARTECIPATION IN BIMANUAL ACTIVITES

Background: Children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy (CP) have early brain injuries resulting in predominantly unilateral motor impairments. A specific Occupational Therapy (OT) treatment can significantly improve the use of... [ view full abstract ]

Background:
Children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy (CP) have early brain injuries resulting in predominantly unilateral motor impairments. A specific Occupational Therapy (OT) treatment can significantly improve the use of the hand in their daily living activities.
Theoretical underpinning:
Most of the OT evaluation tools that we usually use with children with CP, like CHEQ, COPM, MOVI, PACS, AHA and many others, are focused on Occupational Performance. At the same time most of the specific Hand Therapy tools like ROM, PERDUE PEGBOARD, DASH etc, are not suitable to attend our purpose with this children.
Assessment / Intervention/ Technique:
The aim of this study is to create a fusion between these two concept. Identify the most appropriate hand therapy assessment tools to pathology and add them to OT test, in order to provide a further validated, holistic and reproducible basis at the OT evaluation.
We identify CHEQ, COPM and MOVI as pure OT tools; FDT (Functional Dexterity Test), Touch Test Sensory Evaluation, Nine Hole PegTest and Jamar test from the "pure" hand therapy set.
Evaluation of outcome:
These evaluation tests should be performed in established deadlines (example T0 - T1 - T2) to see if there are acceptable variation, and results are related one to each other.
Application to practice:
The application of an evaluation tool such as that proposed can hallows to a deep and complete analysis of hand situation of the children affected by hemiplegia and can give some important information on the construction of a client centered OT program.