Improving dexterity in children with cerebral palsy

Author

van Hedel, Hubertus J.A. ; Wick, Karin ; Meyer-Heim, Andreas ; Eng, Kynan

Author_Institution

Pediatric Rehab Research Group, Rehabilitation Center Affoltern am Albis, University Children´´s Hospital Zurich, Affoltern am Albis, Switzerland

fYear

2011

fDate

27-29 June 2011

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

2

Abstract

We investigated the effectives of a glove-based virtual reality system (YouGrabber) on arm and hand function in 17 children and juveniles with cerebral palsy (CP). The intervention group (n=10) received 12 sessions of training, while the control group (n=7) performed computer games. Analyzed were grip strength and lateral-grip strength, the box-and-block test (BBT) and the nine-hole-peg test (9HPT) of the more affected hand. The BBT tended to improve more in the intervention compared to the control group (P = 0.07). Effect sizes of most measures were considerably larger in the intervention group. Our preliminary data suggest that children and juveniles with CP might profit from a 3 week training with the YouGrabber system to improve hand and arm function.

Keywords

Computers; Extremities; Games; Pediatrics; Robots; Training; Virtual reality; YouGrabber; cerebral palsy; handfunction;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Virtual Rehabilitation (ICVR), 2011 International Conference on

Conference_Location

Zurich, Switzerland

Print_ISBN

978-1-61284-475-6

Electronic_ISBN

978-1-61284-473-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/ICVR.2011.5971872

Filename

5971872