Effect of virtual reality therapy on functional development in children with cerebral palsy: A single-blind, prospective, randomized-controlled study

Özet

Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of virtual reality (VR) therapy on motor and functional development inchildren with cerebral palsy (CP).Patients and methods: In this single-blind, prospective, randomized-controlled study, a total of 41 patients (28 males, 13 females; meanage 8.49 years; range, 5 to 15 years) receiving inpatient treatment for CP were included between April 2009 and September 2009. Thepatients were randomly divided into two groups as the study group (n=21) and control group (n=20). Neurophysiological and conventionaltreatment methods, and occupational therapy were applied to all patients. In addition, a total of 12 VR therapy sessions for one hour wereadministered three days a week for four weeks to the study group. Before and after treatment, the Bimanual Fine Motor Function (BFMF)test was performed to measure hand functioning, Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS) for functional levels, and FunctionalMobility Scale (FMS) for mobility.Results: There was a significant increase in the BFMF, GMFCS, and FMS scores after treatment, compared to baseline values in the studygroup (p<0.05). There was a statistically significant results in favor of the study group for all parameters after treatment compared topre-treatment values (p<0.05).Conclusion: Our study results indicate that VR therapy is a useful treatment method which can be used in rehabilitation of CP with improvedmotor function. The addition of this method to conventional rehabilitation techniques may have a significant impact on treatment success.