Spatiotemporal And Joint Kinematic Analyses In Hemiparetic Cerebral Palsy Children During Stance Phase

Objective. The aim of this study is to identify and quantify spatiotemporaland joint kinematics in hemiparetic cerebral palsy children by threedimensional gait analysis (3DGA).Methods. Gait strategy of36hemiparetic and31healthy children wasquantified by the new anatomically based protocol of3DGA.Spatiotemporal and joint kinematics of lower limbs were identified andcalculated.Results. The gait pattern of the paretic and non paretic sides of hemipareticchildren were different compared to healthy subjects. Shorter stance phasewas noted on the paretic side compared to non paretic and healthy subjects(P<0.05). Hemiparetic children walked with significantly reduced velocity,stride length, step length and cadence compared to healthy subjects.However step width increased considerably in the hemiparetics comparedto healthy children. Joint kinematics during stance indicated thathemiparetic children walked with significantly increased anterior trunk tilt,pelvic tilt and pelvic retraction compared to healthy subjects (P<0.05).Nevertheless; hemiparetics displayed higher values of hip flexion thanhealthy subjects with reduction of both knee flexion and ankle dorsalflexion abilities on the paretic side than non paretic.Conclusion. Hemiparetic cerebral palsy children generally present a unique motor strategy due to the pathology and search of better stability tooptimize gait.