Investigation of Motion Balance of Children with Spastic Diplegia

The aim of this study was to find the features of balance control of cerebral palsy (CP) children by exploring the variances between the CP and TD groups in terms of centre of pressure (COP) deviation, velocity and sum of distances. Eighteen spastic diplegia children (CP) and 36 typical developed counterparts (TD) who were matching with age, height and weight were recruited and measured by pressure plate and then COP parameters such as Relative deviation in the X (Dxrel) and Y axis (Dyrel), Relative velocity in the X (Vxrel) and Y axis (Vyrel) and Relative sum distance in X (Dxrel) and Y axis (Dyrel). Independent T test and reliability analysis were carried out with significance level of 0.05 and confidence interval of 95%. Our results show that Dxrel, Vxrel, Vyrel, SumXrel and SumYrel of CP were significantly higher than those of TD; meanwhile COP of CP was always located at the medial side of foot which indicated a severe valgus and distances in anterior-posterior (AP) direction of CP were smaller than that of TD. At last, a reasonable repeatability was obtained for CP, since their COV of Dxrel, Dyrel, Vxrel, Vyrel, SumXrel and SumYrel CoV were overall <13%, whereas, with exception of ICC of Vxrel and SumXrel, ICC of Dxrel, Dyrel and SumYrel were higher than 0.5. Overall, in order to fulfill the balance control, strategies of foot valgus, larger deviation in medial-lateral (ML) direction, longer contact time and higher velocity in AP and ML directions were adopted by CP children.