ROLE OF EXERCISES IN IMPROVING STATIC, DYNAMIC AND FUNCTIONAL BALANCE IN CEREBRAL PALSY

AIM To rule out the effectiveness and essence of exercise interventions for improving static, dynamic and functional balance in Cerebral Palsy (CP) patients METHOD American Academy of Cerebral Palsy and Developmental Medicine (AACPDM) guidelines was used to formulate the review. Six databases were searched (Pub Med, Google scholar, Cochrane, CINAH, PEDro, Scopus ) using a total number of 28 studies reporting 13 exercise protocols with functional, static and dynamic postural controls RESULTS Five protocols received moderate level of evidence where Treadmill training with little or no body support, Hippotherapy, Gross motor training, Trunk-targeted training, reactive balance training. Six treatment protocols had shown weak or conflicting evidences such as Neuro-Developmental Therapy (NDT), Hippotherapy simulators, Electrical stimulation usually know as Functional Electrical Stimulation (FES), treadmill training with full or partial body weight support, visual biofeedback (using mirror) and virtual reality. CONCLUSION The therapeutic exercise based treatment to improve the overall balance of CP children has remarkably increased since last decade. More studies are suggested to be conducted in order to establish a strong relation between intervention and the outcomes on postural controls. Moreover, future researches must rule out the outliers by standardizing the protocols that are lacking in present studies.