The effect of Halliwick technique on the gait of school age children with spastic cerebral palsy

Objective:To study the effect of Halliwick technique on the gait of school age children with spastic cerebral palsy.Method:Twenty-four spastic cerebral palsy children of Guangzhou Cerebral Palsy Rehabilitation School were selected as subjects.These subjects were divided into the control group(treated with conventional rehabilitation therapy,n=12) and the experimental group(treated with conventional rehabilitation plus Halliwick technique,n=12).The gait functions were assessed before and after 4·month treatment.Result:After treatment,evident differences were found on gait function(P0.05) and on the time-space parameter of gait(except for the load response of left,pre-swing of right) in experiment group(P0.05).Favorable changes were also found by comparing the locus diagram of centroid offsets of plantar pressure and plantar pressure curves.There was no significant change on the time-space parameters of gait in control group before and after treatment(P0.05),slight change was found by comparing the locus diagram of centroid offsets of plantar pressure and plantar pressure curves.Significant difference was found on stride length between the two groups after treatment(P0.05),while no evident significant change was found on other parameters(P0.05).Conclusion:The conventional rehabilitation plus Halliwick therapy has significant effectiveness on the gait functions,which indicating that the Halliwick therapy based on conventional rehabilitation is an effective rehabilitation approach for spastic cerebral palsy children in school age.