High dose constraint-induced movement therapy effective for cerebral palsy in children: Study

USA: In a new study conducted by Sharon Landesman Ramey and team, it was shown that although most individual blinded outcomes fell below statistical significance for group differences, high-dose Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy (CIMT) consistently provided the biggest gains at both time periods, according to the Children with Hemiparesis Arm and Hand Movement Project (CHAMP). The findings of this study were published in the journal Pediatrics. 

The objective of this study was to assess the efficacy of Constraint-Induced Movement Therapy for cerebral palsy children. For this, researchers contrasted two dosages and two constraint types CIMT to standard care (UCT). 

The study was designed intricately where, CHAMP randomly allocated 118 2- to 8-year-olds with hemiparetic cerebral palsy to one of five therapies, with evaluations at the beginning, end, and 6 months after treatment. The helping hand evaluation, Peabody Motor Development Scales, Second Edition, Visual-Motor Integration, and Quality of Upper Extremity Skills Test Dissociated Movement were the primary blinded outcomes. Next parameter was the Pediatric Evaluation of Disabilities Inventory-Computer Adaptive Test Daily Activities and Child Motor Activity Log How Often scales were used by parents to rate functioning. The analyses concentrated on blinded and parent-reported outcomes, as well as rank-order increases across all measures.