Effect of therapeutic riding on the coordination of movements of Down-syndrome children

Komoróczki-Steiner, Henriette and Szilágyi, Tibor (2006) Effect of therapeutic riding on the coordination of movements of Down-syndrome children. JOURNAL OF COMPUTATIONAL AND APPLIED MECHANICS, 7 (1). pp. 59-74. ISSN 1586-2070

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Abstract

We examined the effect of therapeutic riding on development of Down-syndrome children. Examination of walking is appropriate for assessing the coordination of movement and for following the changes. We found therapeutic riding should be considered as a new form of habilitation. Pupils of an auxiliary school participated in therapeutic riding. This raised the question how therapeutic riding affects the development of motion, so we researched it. We selected riding and non-riding children and conducted walk analysis one month before and after therapeutic riding to follow the changes in their coordination. We chose to analyse walking. We used four video cameras from four different views. We processed the data by the APAS video analyser system. We used the Dempster model. For the construction of the model we conducted anthropometric measurements. This method made it possible to follow the movements of the selected points of the body in three dimensions. Statistical analysis was based on T-probe. We found significant differences between test and control groups. In the case of the children who participated in therapeutic riding several parameters were similar to the same parameters of healthy children. Their gait asymmetry and hip-motion asymmetry was decreased. We made several movement analyses of the same group and these data were compared. According to our results therapeutic riding may be successfully used as an additional therapy for Down-syndrome children and it may present a form of habilitation in cases when other means of therapy are not successful.

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