Efficacy of seat surface inclination on postural control during reaching in sitting position in children / Enas Hamdy Aly Elnady ; Supervised Faten Hassan Abdelazium , Mostafa Elsherbini

Thesis (Ph.D.) - Cairo University - Faculty of physical therapy - Department of Growth and Development Disorders in Pediatrics

The purpose of this study to evaluate the effect of seat surface inclination on postural control during reaching in sitting position in normal and hemiplegic children , Fifteen right spastic hemiplegic and fifteen normal typically developed children aged from 7-9 years were involved in the study ,The study was conducted in gait laboratory at National Institute of Neuro motor System , Methods: The participants were assessed during forward reaching in three conditions: sitting with the seat surface oriented horizontally, tilted 15 degrees forward and backward. Postural muscle activity were recorded using Delsys Wireless electromyography system in addition to modified paediatric functional reaching test to evaluate postural stability Results: Analysis of Variance and Unpaired T- test reveals that there is a significant difference of postural muscle activity and postural stability in terms of Modified paediatric functional reaching test among three conditions in and between the two groups respectively , Post hoc test indicated that forward inclined seat surface has least postural activity and more postural stability Conclusions: In spastic hemiplegic cerebral palsy and typically developed children , forward inclined seat surface is best position as it is associated with least postural muscle activity and more postural stability during forward reaching

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