Kinematic characteristics of reaching in children with hemiplegic cerebral palsy: A comparative study

Practitioners need more sensitive measures to quantify reaching movement for judgement of the treatment effects and reflecting the degrees of motor impairment in upper extremities.

The purposes of this study were to differentiate between spastic and normal reaching using three-dimensional (3D) motion analysis and to quantify the interference of spasticity on reaching movement in children with congenital hemiplegic cerebral palsy.

Fifteen children with hemiplegic CP as a study group and 15 normal typically-developing (TD) children as a control group were studied. Participants were asked to reach forward, at a self-selected pace, toward one target at a normalized distance. A motion analysis system was used to record the trajectory of reaching performance. Kinematic parameters were computed and analysed.

There were significant differences between the normal and spastic reaching (p < 0.001). Hemiplegic CP demonstrated slower and less smooth (higher normalized jerk score and more movement units) movement than the TD group, this reflects feedback guidance to correct spatial inaccuracy of reaching in hemiplegic CP.

Kinematic analysis quantifies reaching characteristics and provides objective information about the motor strategies associated with goal-oriented tasks.