https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3982-0914
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ABSTRACT
Background: Children with cerebral palsy (CP) show age-driven development and individual fluctuations in walking capacity.
Aim: 1. To precisely quantify 1MWT changes in children with CP, GMFCS level 1 and 2, generating 1MWT percentiles, depicting expected development over 6 months; 2. to assess the effect of a 6-month rehabilitation using whole-body vibration (WBV).
Methods: Retrospective data analysis in 210 children with CP, GMFCS 1 and 2 who received standardized rehabilitation (DRKS00011331). 1MWT was assessed before (M0) and after treatment (M6), and at a 6-month follow-up (M12). Centiles were created using the lambda-mu-sigma method. Cohen’s d was used to assess effect size.
Results: We created 1MWT percentiles using data of all 210 children (M0 data). A small treatment effect size (d = 0.46) was found (M6 and M12 data).
Conclusions: Using the generated centiles clinicians may monitor 1MWT changes over 6 months. Combining WBV and conventional physiotherapy may improve 1MWT in children with CP.
Abbreviations: 1MWT: One-Minute Walk Test; 6MWT: Six-Minute Walk Test; CP: Cerebral palsy; ES: effect size; GMFCS: Gross Motor Function Classification System; GMFM-66: Gross Motor Function Measure 66; LOESS: Locally Estimated Scatterplot Smoothing; LMS: lambda-mu-sigma; SD: standard deviation; WBV: whole-body-vibration.
Acknowledgments
We thank the physical therapists at the UniReha GmbH, Center of Prevention and Rehabilitation of the University of Cologne for their dedicated and qualitative work. We acknowledge Ida Alperstedt and Angelika Stabrey for database management.
Declaration of interest
We declare no competing interests. No funding to declare. ID is working at the Centre of Prevention and Rehabilitation of the University of Cologne and ES is directing the center.