Samah M. Abdelazeim Elsadany, Faten H. Abdelazeim, Mohamed Elsayed Elawady

Abstract

Background and Objective: Diplegic cerebral palsy children severed from primary functional problem expressed as abnormal gait pattern leading to limitation of mobility and activity of daily living. This study was aimed to compare the long-lasting effect of transcranial direct current stimulation and task-specific training in the form of treadmill on spatiotemporal gait parameter in children with diplegic cerebral palsy. Method: A randomized –trial was conducted involving 40 children with spastic diplegic cerebral palsy between six to ten years of age. The spatiotemporal gait parameters were evaluated for all children 3 times, 1st evaluation (pre-treatment), 2nd evaluation by the end of 2nd week after the studied interventions (post-treatment 1) and 3rd evaluation by the end of 12 successive weeks after the treatment program completion (post-treatment 2). The participants were assigned randomly into two groups (A & B), both groups were received selected physical therapy gait training program for 5 times/week for two successive weeks in addition to selected intervention, then 3 sessions/week for the remaining of treatment program for 10 weeks, group (A) was submitted to active transcranial direct current stimulation and group (B) was submitted to treadmill training and sham transcranial direct current stimulation, each intervention was applied for 5 times/week for two successive weeks (total of 10 sessions). Result: there was a significant improvement in both groups regarding selected spatiotemporal gait parameters (step length and gait velocity) with better results in tDCs group compared to the treadmill group; furthermore tDCs group showed an increase in spatiotemporal gait parameters for 10 successive weeks following the intervention completion. Conclusion: tDCS promoted a great improvement and long-lasting effect on spatiotemporal gait parameters in children with diplegic cerebral palsy.