Physiospot Paediatrics

Physiospot Redirect

All of our Physiospot blogs can now be found together at www.physiospot.com

You will need to sign up to the new RSS feeds and email updates to continue receiving regular updates on all the latest clinically relevant research.

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New Year, New Start!

With the expansion in the number of Physispot blogs available in 2007 it has become quite a large task to continually juggle them all and is not conducive to an effective service for our readers. We have therefore made the decision to amalgamate all the blogs into one place at www.physiospot.com.  Whilst you will be able to read all the  articles that have been selected as clinically relevant and posted we have developed separate areas of the site for research in different clinical areas. 

By making the management process more efficient not only will we be able to devote more time to actually posting articles but it will also provide a number of additional benefits:

• Each clinical area can be easily accessed from the navigation bar at the top of each page, no more flicking between different blogs.
• Articles can be tagged with more than one clinical area thereby adding more articles to each individual clinical area.
• The search function will search across all clinical areas so that you will be looking for what you need amongst all the articles posted.
• More easily keep up-to-date with recent additions in multiple clinicl areas by freely subscribing to one or more of our update options.
• Authors can easily work in more than one clinical area which may be useful for their own professional development and evidence based practice.

There is one small inconvenience to our readers which can be easily overcome.  As of today the email alerts and feeds for all the old physispot blogs will cease to function.  You will need to sign up again to receive the update alerts that you are interested in.  Go to the update options page to sign up now for your RSS feed and Email Alerts.  You can also download our toolbar to receive updates straight to your desktop and follow us on Twitter from this page.

We hope that all our readers are happy with the developments and that you enjoy the site and continue to find it useful, had we not done this we may not have been able to carry on with the juggling!  Visit the new site at www.physiospot.com

The Oxford ankle foot questionnaire for children: SCALING, RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY

Morris, C., Doll, H. A., Wainwright, A., Theologis, T., Fitzpatrick, R.

The Oxford ankle foot questionnaire was developed to assess the disability associated with foot and ankle problems in children aged from five to 16 years. A survey of 158 children and their parents was carried out to determine the content, scaling, reliability and validity of the instrument. Scores from the questionnaire can be calculated to measure the effect of foot or ankle problems on three domains of children’s lives: physical, school and play, and emotional. Scores for each domain were shown to be internally consistent, stable, and to vary little whether reported by child or parent. Satisfactory face, content and construct validity were demonstrated.

The questionnaire is appropriate for children with a range of conditions and can provide clinically useful information to supplement other assessment methods.

Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery - British Volume, 90-B(11), 1451-1456.

Link to Abstract

Prognostic factors and outcome of treatment in Perthes' disease: a prospective study of 368 patients with five-year follow-up.

Wiig O, Terjesen T, Svenningsen S

This nationwide prospective study was designed to determine prognostic factors and evaluate the outcome of different treatments of Perthes' disease. It recommends proximal femoral varus osteotomy in children aged six years and over at the time of diagnosis with hips having more than 50% femoral head necrosis and suggests that the abduction orthosis should be abandoned in Perthes' disease.

Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery, 2008, 90(10), 1364-71

Link to abstract

Asthma education and monitoring: what has been shown to work

Alwin F.J. Brouwer and Paul L.P. Brand.

This exhaustive evidence-based review provides an interesting update about current recommendations in asthma management.

Paediatric Respiratory Reviews, 9(3), 09/2008, 193-200.

Link to abstract:

Effect of ankle-foot orthoses on walking efficiency and gait in children with cerebral palsy.

Brehm MA, Harlaar J, Schwartz M

This study determined the effect of ankle-foot orthoses on walking efficiency and gait in a heterogeneous group of children with cerebral palsy, using barefoot walking as the control condition. The use of an ankle-foot orthosis resulted in a significant decrease in the energy cost of walking of quadriplegic children with cerebral palsy, compared with barefoot walking, whereas it remained unchanged in hemiplegic and diplegic children with cerebral palsy. Energy cost reduction was related to both a faster and more efficient walking pattern. The improvements in efficiency were reflected in changes of stance and swing phase knee motion, i.e. those children whose knee flexion angle improved toward the typical normal range demonstrated a decrease in energy cost of walking, and vice versa.

This study supports the use of ankle-foot orthoses for quadriplegic children with cerebral palsy.

Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine, 2008, 40(7), 529-34

Link to Abstract

Early Detection of Lung Disease in Children with Cystic Fibrosis Using Lung Function

Sarath Ranganathan, Barry Linnane, Gary Nolan, Catherine Gangell and Graham Hall.

This review describes recent research findings in infants and preschool children and outlines available lung function techniques, issues around their standardization and their interest in young children with CF.

Paediatric Respiratory Reviews, 9(3), 09/2008, 160-167.

Link to abstract:

Exercise therapy in juvenile idiopathic arthritis: a Cochrane Review.

 

Takken T, Van Brussel M, Engelbert RH, Van Der Net J, Kuis W, Helders PJ

The objective of this review was to assess the effects of exercise therapy on functional ability, quality of life and aerobic capacity in children with JIA.  Three out of 16 identified studies met the inclusion criteria, with a total of 212 participants. The results suggest that the outcome measures all favoured the exercise therapy but none were statistically significant. None of the studies reported negative effects of the exercise therapy.

Overall, there was no clinically important or statistically significant evidence that exercise therapy can improve functional ability, quality of life, aerobic capacity or pain. The included and excluded studies were all consistent about the adverse effects of exercise therapy; no short-term detrimental effects of exercise therapy were found in any study. Both included and excluded studies showed that exercise does not exacerbate arthritis. Although the short-term effects look promising, the long-term effect of exercise therapy remains unclear.

European Journal of Physical and Rehabilitation Medicine, 2008, 44(3), 287-97

Link to Full Text

Objectively Measured Physical Activity and Bone Strength in 9-Year-Old Boys and Girls

Luís B. Sardinha, Fátima Baptista and Ulf Ekelund.

This study analyzes the relationship between intensity and duration of physical activity and composite indices of femoral neck strength and bone-mineral content of the femoral neck, lumbar spine, and total body in 143 girls and 150 boys. It finds that daily vigorous physical activity for at least 25 minutes seems to improve femoral neck bone health in children, although there are discrepancies between genders. The lumbar spine is not affected.

Pediatrics, 122(3), 09/2008, 728-736.

Link to abstract: