Purpose of the study: To evaluate our experience with indications for surgery based on instrumental gait analysis in cerebral palsy children, and to compare them with those drawn from the results of clinical examination.
Material and methods: The gait analysis laboratory was built in the Paediatric Hospital of the Faculty of Medicine in Brno in the 2008/09 period with support of the Norwegian funds. It is equipped with eight optical cameras, two auxiliary motion-picture video came- ras, two force platforms and a telemetry system for electromyography. Between June 2009 and March 2010 a total of 297 children with spastic cerebral palsy, 66 with hemiparesis and 231 with diparesis were examined.
Results: On the basis of instrumental gait analysis, indications for surgery were established in 19 hemiparetic and 88 diparetic patients, which meant a new indication in 107 children. In 14 children, the results of gait analysis led to abandoning former indications for surgery based on clinical examination only while, in 13 children, they backed up the surgical indications in spite of the negative results of clinical examination. In six children a so-called superclinical decision was made, i.e., the results of repeated clinical examinations over-weighed those of instrumental gait analysis either in favour of or against surgery.
Discussion: Based on the gait analysis results, a change in treatment plans was made in 27 out of 297 children (9 %). This is in contrast with the findings of other authors who report a much higher rate of treatment planning changes (52-70 %) In our stu- dy the use of instrumental gait analysis allowed us to decrease the frequency of surgical indications by 4.7 %. Other authors have achieved a higher value, up to 13 %. Unlike other studies, ours did not confirm the effect of gait analysis outcomes on an increase in the number of one-stage multi-level surgical procedures.
Conclusions: Instrumental gait analysis is a great contribution to the diagnosis of movement disorders in children with cerebral palsy.