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Article Type

Article

Subject Area

Pediatrics

Abstract

Background In hemiplegic spastic cerebral palsy (CP) patients, the affected hand can present with a combination of spasticity, weakness, and dystonia. Electrical stimulation is a part of a physical therapy program that is used for improving hand function, and one of the methods of electrical stimulation is reciprocal electrical stimulation (RES). RES mimics the neuromuscular-stimulation procedure for alternate activation of agonist and antagonist muscle groups. Also, RES has been reported to decrease the cortical excitability of the spastic muscle and to improve neural drive through stimulation of sensory receptors and sensory neurons of agonist and antagonist muscles. Our study aims to evaluate the effect of RES on handgrip strength and pinch grip strength on spastic CP children. Patients and methods In total, 60 hemiplegic spastic CP children were randomly assigned into two groups, the study group comprised 30 participants and 30 participants in the control group. The study group received an exercise program combined with RES, while the control group received an exercise program joined with faradic stimulation for wrist extensors. Participants in both groups have been evaluated for their handgrip strength and pinch grip strength at baseline and after 12 weeks of physical therapy training. Results Statistically significant differences were found when comparing pre-evaluation and postevaluation results for handgrip strength and pinch grip strength in both the control and the study groups. Significant differences were found between the improvement in the control group and the study group. Conclusion Both wrist extensor faradic stimulation and RES have affected the improvement of grip strength and pinch grip strength when added to an exercise program. However, this study result suggests that RES is more beneficial than faradic wrist extensor stimulation.

Keywords

Cerebral palsy, cortical excitability, reciprocal electrical stimulation

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