Motor, sensorial and cognitive changes in children spastic diparetic cerebral palsy submitted to Kabat and Bobath pshyiotherapy approaches

Abstract

The aim of this work was to investigate the motors, sensorial and cognitive changes in children with spastic diparetics cerebral palsy witch were submitted to differentphysiotherapy approaches; Kabat method and Bobath method. Six children with diagnosis of spastic diparetics cerebral palsy, of both sexes, between 6 and 8 years old, without convulsive crises, IQ above 60 and already doing physiotherapy sessions, continued being treats as the same way. They were evaluated through the scales of assessment of muscle tone and static and dynamics functional activities,
somatossensory test, sensorymotor test and intelligence Stanford-Binet IV scale. So divide into two groups with 3 children each - Kabat group and Bobath group. They were treats for three months. After this period, The children were evaluated again and group result's were compared. Three
normal children composed Control group. The result related to the muscle tone evaluation showed that did not occur an increase of tone after physiotherapy treatment. This maintenance of initial tone grades at the final evaluation does not agree with the idea that Kabat method would increase muscle tone. In relation to the functional actives, the results
showed improvement at children's performance in Kabat and maintenance
of performance for the Bobath group, except for child 5. The results of somatossensory test show significant improvement in the forefinger, abdome and foot the children treated with Kabat method, but not at Bobath group. The sensorymotor test, show significant improvement in the palm of the hand and abdome at Kabat group, and thigh at Bobath group. The results of cognitive test showed improvement more evident in the bead memory, pattern's analyze and object memory at Bobath group. In conclusion, the occurrence of motor and sensorial changes was more evident at Kabat group and the cognitive changes at Bobath group.