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Published on: September 16, 2013
Hand positioning sense in children with spina bifida myelomeningocele
Rita Hwang1, Megan Kentish, Yvonne Burns
1Department of Physiotherapy, The Prince Charles Hospital, Brisbane, QLD, 4032, Australia. hwang_r@hotmail.com
Insights
Children with myelomeningocele exhibit impaired hand kinaesthesia, affecting their ability to accurately and quickly replicate hand positions. This reduced kinaesthetic awareness may contribute to functional hand deficits in this population.
Area of Science:
- Neuroscience
- Developmental Pediatrics
Background:
- Myelomeningocele, a severe form of spina bifida, often leads to motor and sensory deficits.
- Hand function impairments are frequently observed in children with myelomeningocele, but the underlying sensory mechanisms are not fully understood.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the kinaesthetic awareness of the hands in children with myelomeningocele.
- To compare hand kinaesthesia between children with myelomeningocele and typically developing controls.
Main Methods:
- A comparative study involving 21 children with myelomeningocele and 21 age-matched controls (6-12 years).
- Kinaesthetic awareness was assessed by evaluating the accuracy and speed of copying hand positions under visual and kinaesthetic cueing.
Main Results:
- Children with myelomeningocele demonstrated significantly lower accuracy in replicating hand positions compared to controls (73% vs. 87%).
- Children with myelomeningocele were also significantly slower in performing the hand-copying tasks.
Conclusions:
- This study confirms impaired kinaesthetic awareness in the hands of children with myelomeningocele.
- Reduced hand kinaesthesia is a potential contributing factor to the observed hand function difficulties in this population.
Abstract:
This study was undertaken to establish whether children with myelomeningocele have abnormal kinaesthesia of the hands. Twenty-one children with myelomeningocele and 21 control children aged between six and 12 years were involved in the study. The level of kinaesthetic awareness in the hands was measured by examining the child's ability to copy hand positions, using visual cueing and kinaesthetic cueing. Both accuracy and speed of copying hand gestures were assessed. Children with spina bifida were significantly less accurate in achieving hand positions than the control group (chi square(1) = 22.60, p < 0.001), with 73% of the children with spina bifida achieving accurate replications compared with 87% in the control group. Furthermore, children with myelomeningocele were shown to be slower than the controls (F(1,280) = 15.49, p < 0.001). The impaired kinaesthetic awareness found in this study is considered to be one of the factors behind the poor hand function observed in children with myelomeningocele.
