Effectiveness of ankle foot orthoses for improving walking speed among spastic diplegic cerebral palsy children attended at CRP

Abstract

Purpose: Effectiveness of Ankle Foot Orthoses for improving walking speed among spastic diplegic cerebral palsy children attended at CRP. Objectives: To assess the velocity of walking, to find out the stride length, step length, cadence and to discover the walking speed among cerebral palsy children while they were walking with and without AFO. Methodology: 10 participants with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy were selected through simple random sampling and they were allowed to walk at their self selected speed with and without AFO to compare the walking speed for this same subject study under experimental design. The study is conducted at pediatric Unit, Orthotic and Prosthetic Department and William and Marrie Tailor School of CRP. Ten meter walking test is used to measure the velocity of walking, stride length, step length and cadence while the participants were walking with or without AFO. Related “t” test is used to compare the result. Results: Ankle Foot Orthoses is an effective device to improve walking speed in spastic diplegic cerebral palsy children in compare with bare foot walking because it showed a significant improvement in case of velocity of walking (p<0.025), stride length (p<0.01) & step length (p<0.025). Cadence is the only one gait parameter which is not found to be significant. Conclusion: When wearing Ankle Foot Orthosis, statistically significant increases in stride length, step length and velocity were noted compared with bare foot walking. Cadence is the only one parameters which is not found to be significant. This experimental study demonstrates that Ankle Foot Orthosis in our population provide clinical improvements in the temporal and spatial parameters of gait listed above. As velocity is the product of stride length, step length and cadence, the increase in stride length and step length but not cadence resulted in an increase in velocity for cerebral palsy population.