DefinePK

Abstract

Background: Cerebral palsy (CP) is a disorder that is characterized by developmental delay, postural impairments and movement dysfunction such as manual ability deficits or in coordination. It occurs either in the fetal period or in infancy due to brain insult .Treatments to enhance the manual ability and functional improvement are Physiotherapy, Neuromuscular electrical stimulation, Occupational Therapy, casting & splinting and Pharmacologic agents. Moreover a possible new rehabilitative approach called Action observation therapy (AOT) that stimulates the motor areas in brain.
Methodology: RCT study was carried out at National Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine and OASIS physiotherapy and rehabilitation center, Islamabad from January 2018 to July 2018 with total 6 months duration with aim to determine the effect of AOT in functional mobility and manual dexterity of UL in spastic CP. For this 22 patients were selected from which 11 received AOT with routine physiotherapy and remaining 11 were treated with only routine physiotherapy. Both group received treatment for three session per week of 8 weeks . Assessment were done by abilhand kids test and box & block test. With comparison of pre and post assessment, those patients who received AOT with routine physiotherapy were shown much improvement in their daily actions especially with dominant hand.
Results: The interventional study was conducted to determine the effects of action observation therapy in patients with cerebral palsy. Results shown significant improvement in AOT group with the p-value <0.05. Mean rank score of Box and Block test with dominant hand in experimental group was 16.45 and in control group mean rank score was 6.55 and mean rank score of Box and Block test with non-dominant hand in experimental group was 16.91 and in control group mean rank score was 6.09 with p value 0.001 that showed statically significant reduction in disability. In this study, AOT group showed more significant improvement on abhilhand kids and box and block test (BBT) with p value (< 0.05).
Keywords: Action Observation Therapy, Conventional PT, Spastic Cerebral palsy, Upper limb.