Inmaculada Riquelme1, Camille Henne2, Benoit Flament3, Valéry Legrain4, Yannick Bleyenheuft4, Samar M Hatem5. 1. University Institute of Health Sciences Research, University of Balearic Islands, Palma de Mallorca, Spain; Department of Nursing and Physiotherapy, University of Balearic Islands, Palma de Mallorca, Spain. 2. Brugmann University Hospital, Brussels, Belgium. 3. Haute Ecole Louvain en Hainaut, Montignies-sur-Sambre, Belgium. 4. Institute of Neuroscience, Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium. 5. Brugmann University Hospital, Brussels, Belgium; Institute of Neuroscience, Université catholique de Louvain, Brussels, Belgium; Faculty of Medicine, Faculty of Physical Education and Physiotherapy, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium. Electronic address: samar.hatem@chu-brugmann.be.
Abstract
INTRODUCTION:Unilateral visuospatial deficits have been observed in children with brain damage. While the effectiveness of prism adaptation for treating unilateral neglect in adult stroke patients has been demonstrated previously, the usefulness of prism adaptation in a pediatric population is still unknown. The present study aims at evaluating the feasibility of prism adaptation in children with unilateral brain lesion and comparing the validity of a game procedure designed for child-friendly paediatric intervention, with the ecological task used for prism adaptation in adult patients. METHODS:Twenty-one children with unilateral brain lesion randomly were assigned to a prism group wearing prismatic glasses, or a control group wearing neutral glasses during a bimanual task intervention. All children performed two different bimanual tasks on randomly assigned consecutive days: ecological tasks or game tasks. The efficacy of prism adaptation was measured by assessing its after-effects with visual open loop pointing (visuoproprioceptive test) and subjective straight-ahead pointing (proprioceptive test). RESULTS: Game tasks and ecological tasks produced similar after-effects. Prismatic glasses elicited a significant shift of visuospatial coordinates which was not observed in the control group. CONCLUSION:Prism adaptation performed with game tasks seems an effective procedure to obtain after-effects in children with unilateral brain lesion. The usefulness of repetitive prism adaptation sessions as a therapeutic intervention in children with visuospatial deficits and/or neglect, should be investigated in future studies.
RCT Entities:
INTRODUCTION: Unilateral visuospatial deficits have been observed in children with brain damage. While the effectiveness of prism adaptation for treating unilateral neglect in adult strokepatients has been demonstrated previously, the usefulness of prism adaptation in a pediatric population is still unknown. The present study aims at evaluating the feasibility of prism adaptation in children with unilateral brain lesion and comparing the validity of a game procedure designed for child-friendly paediatric intervention, with the ecological task used for prism adaptation in adult patients. METHODS: Twenty-one children with unilateral brain lesion randomly were assigned to a prism group wearing prismatic glasses, or a control group wearing neutral glasses during a bimanual task intervention. All children performed two different bimanual tasks on randomly assigned consecutive days: ecological tasks or game tasks. The efficacy of prism adaptation was measured by assessing its after-effects with visual open loop pointing (visuoproprioceptive test) and subjective straight-ahead pointing (proprioceptive test). RESULTS: Game tasks and ecological tasks produced similar after-effects. Prismatic glasses elicited a significant shift of visuospatial coordinates which was not observed in the control group. CONCLUSION: Prism adaptation performed with game tasks seems an effective procedure to obtain after-effects in children with unilateral brain lesion. The usefulness of repetitive prism adaptation sessions as a therapeutic intervention in children with visuospatial deficits and/or neglect, should be investigated in future studies.
Authors: Anna Pease; Trudy Goodenough; Cath Borwick; Rose Watanabe; Christopher Morris; Cathy Williams Journal: BMJ Open Date: 2021-09-29 Impact factor: 2.692