Active clinical trials for "Cerebral Palsy"

The Occupational Therapy Department at Boston Children's Hospital is teaming up with MGH Institute of Health Professions to explore the benefits of using robot assisted therapy (Amadeo) and a problem solving approach (Active Learning Program for Stroke) to achieving functional goals for children ages 7-17 years old that have hemiparesis. The hope is to help participants make gains in both hand/arm skills and progress in everyday activities such as self-care, play, school and work. Participation will look like regular therapy with sessions 3 times weekly for 8 weeks. Each visit will include time for games on the Amadeo and time spent problem solving current activity challenges for each child. Families are encouraged to participate.

The purpose of the study is to assess implementation and effectiveness of a caregiver-delivered rehabilitation intervention for infants and toddlers with cerebral palsy.

Crouch gait/walking, characterized by an 'over-flexed' knee when the leg is supporting body weight, is common in children with diagnoses of cerebral palsy, spina bifida and other incomplete spinal cord injuries. The "Agilik" is a leg exoskeleton device that aims to improve how children with crouch gait walk. In this study the investigators will quantify the improvement that the Agilik facilitates in children with crouch gait in two ways: 1) the difference the Agilik makes when the participants start using it, and 2) any 'training effects' that can be seen in barefoot walking after six sessions of training with the Agilik.

Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most common cause of child disability. Nearly 40% of PC children suffer from sleep disorders, which are not routinely screened. The neuro-cognitive, physical and environmental morbidity of sleep disorders should require their diagnosis and management. Limited access to the reference exam (polysomnography or PSG) delays the diagnosis and only allows screening of these disorders for a limited number of PC children. The hypothesis of our study is that connected technologies could optimize screening for sleep disorders in PC children by selecting children requiring PSG exploration and specific management.

The goal of this research is to provide limb training in children with hemiplegia using a bimanual-to-unimanual training approach. Twenty pediatric patients aged 5-17 years with acquired brain injury will receive training on the bimanual-to-unimanual device for a period of 9 weeks. During the training, children use both arms to operate robotic arms to play a video game. We will assess changes in hand impairment after the training.

For children who use a power wheelchair, a powered wheelchair standing device (PWSD) may be considered for daily use. A PWSD allows a child to electronically move between sitting and standing and can be driven in either position. Existing published PWSD research in pediatrics is limited to boys with Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD).(1, 2) While these studies provide some insights into PWSD use in boys with DMD, they do not reflect PWSD use in children with other conditions. The purpose of this exploratory study is to determine the feasibility of a research protocol exploring use of a PWSD in children who have neurodevelopmental conditions other than DMD.

This study aims to determine if a tele-rehabilitation home exercise program is feasible to promote adherence to a fitness and mobility exercise program in ambulatory adults with cerebral palsy (GMFCS I, II, III) aged 21- 60 year old, and second, to determine if a tele-health exercise program improves fitness and functional mobility for participants.

Cerebral palsy (CP) refers to a group of movement and posture disorders responsible for activity limitation due to brain damage that occurs during fetal development or during the first year of a child's life. Given the multitude of treatment options available, the choice of treatment is a key determinant that greatly influences the potential for improvement in motor function. This choice is based in particular on a diagnosis resulting from the comparison of a Clinical Gait Analysis (CGA) and a clinical examination, carried out by a practitioner, aimed at evaluating as accurately as possible the deficiencies present in children with CP. During the latter examination, passive inter-segmental stiffness and spasticity, both limiting factors in the mobility of the child with CP, are assessed. However, there are significant uncertainties in these measurements, which depend, among other things, on the examiner's feelings. The enrichment of this clinical assessment therefore requires the introduction of quantitative and objective measures. Portable dynamometers are increasingly used to measure the resistance of a joint during passive solicitations. Thus, both passive inter-segmental stiffness and spasticity can be characterized using instrumental methods. However, in the majority of studies proposed in the literature, the biomechanical computational model used is not unified with that of the CGA, thus altering the approximation of the parameters measured on the table with those estimated during gait. However, in order to evaluate the extent to which these phenomena occur during gait, it is important to follow the same biomechanical calculation procedure. Thus, our team proposes a new dynamometric measurement protocol for passive inter-segmental stiffness and spasticity adapted to the PC child. Nevertheless, in order to guarantee the reliability of the measurements, manual dynamometric solicitation methods must follow standardized protocols, and their psychometric properties must be defined before they can be used in clinical practice. This is why we wish to study the reliability of this new solution for dynamometric quantification of passive inter-segmental stiffness and spasticity in children with CP.

The purpose of the current study is to evaluate the correlation between anthropometric measurement (weight, height and BMI) and balance in children with cerebral palsy.

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a major neurodevelopmental disorder with an estimated prevalence of approximately one in 500 children. It is characterised by permanent developmental disorders of movement and posture, responsible for activity limitations, caused by non-progressive damage to the brain of the fetus, newborn or infant during development. The neurobiological mechanisms involved in CP remain poorly understood, although the interruption of cerebral oxygen supply during pregnancy or at the time of delivery is classically considered to be the main factor causing neurodevelopmental sequelae. CP also occurs in full-term infants without a clearly identifiable etiology. Data from the literature suggest the existence of other pathophysiological processes than only acquired brain lesions related to pregnancy and delivery, such as genetic or epigenetic factors. According to some research teams, nearly one third of CP could have a genetic cause or could be favoured by genetic variants. Preliminary research has made significant progress in revealing unusual copy number variants and/or mutations in single genes in children with CP. Several of the identified genes are involved in neurodevelopment and neuronal connectivity. Nevertheless, the identification of these abnormalities in CP may contribute to a better understanding of the pathophysiology of this complex and multifactorial disorder. It could also shed new light on the analysis of medico-legal files and bring encouraging perspectives by targeting new therapeutic interventions. The main hypothesis is that a certain number of cerebral palsies are related to - or favoured by - genetic abnormalities that we will search for with genetic screening tests.