Cerebral palsy (CP) is a common disability among children, characterized by abnormal gait patterns and the inability to maintain posture and balance.
An alternative rehabilitative therapy
Hippotherapy (HPOT) is an alternative rehabilitative therapy modality. Its particularity is that horses are used to carry out exercise programs directed by a qualified professional.
Horses are prepared to work with the people for whom the therapy is directed. They are perfectly selected and trained animals for this function. And indeed, horseback riding is used to improve functional mobility in children with cerebral palsy.
While the condition is incurable, physical therapy treatments can go a long way toward improving movement and balance.
One such treatment approach is hippotherapy (HPOT), which uses horseback riding to improve functional mobility in children with cerebral palsy. Although supported by scientific studies as an effective treatment approach for PC, there is unfortunately little data on how HPOT produces an improvement.
The rehabilitation of people with neurological impairment
Recently, a team of researchers from Korea and the United States addressed this question, investigating physical interaction metrics between horses and children with cerebral palsy during HPOT.
“My original research interest lies in the rehabilitation of people with neurological impairment, specifically gait and balance. However, I didn’t learn about hippotherapy until relatively recently in 2016. After realizing how effective it is in treating children with cerebral palsy, it motivated me to explore it further. ” Explains Dr. Pilwon Hur, who led the study at the Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) in Korea.
This document was made available online on September 6, 2021 and published in Volume 18, Number 132 of the Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation.
ABOUT THE STUDY:
The research team studied four children with cerebral palsy over the course of eight physical therapy sessions. They placed sensors on the horses and children to record their movements and track their acceleration and angular velocity.
They found that the data for the horses and children began to resemble each other as time passed. Which indicates a synchronization between horse and rider. They also gave the children mobility tests after each session and observed an improvement in their motor skills at the end of the experiment.
RESULTS:
“We found that the physical interaction between children with cerebral palsy and horses, characterized by children’s adaptation to horse movement and vice versa, is extremely important for rehabilitation to be effective,” says Dr. Hur.
Excited by these findings, the team hopes their work will provide a baseline for future research on HPOT. “As far as I know, ours is the first study to quantify these interactions and link them to effectiveness,” says Dr. Hur.
“This understanding would help us to optimize physiotherapy programs, improving the quality of life of children with cerebral palsy.”
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