The effect of the hypotherapy applied to a case of delay in neuropsychomotor development when compared with an individual without alterations of a twin gestation

Bruna Souza
UniFMU - Pediatria

Rebeca Santos
UniFMU

Carlos Monteiro
UniFMU - Pediatria

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     Last modified: February 27, 2007

Abstract
Introduction: Neuropsychomotor development is the capability of an individual to realize increasingly complex functions since the time of uterine life. Some children have a delay in psychomotor development and need to initiate a physiotherapy program. There are different approaches to this, and one of those is hypotherapy, a complemental therapeutic practice with the interaction of a horse in the aid to reorganize the neuropsychomotor of patients. Objective: Observe the effects of hypotherapy treatment in a case of neuropsychomotor development delay. Method: Two children with the age of 1 year took part in the study, one with neuropsychomotor development delay without defined cause and her twin sister, without alteration of development, used for control and not subjected to any treatment. From December 2005 to August 2006, both children were evaluated by the Pediatric Evaluation of Disability Inventory (PEDI), an evaluation instrument that possesses 197 items in the areas of self-care, mobility and social function that shows alterations in functional abilities. The intervention was performed only on the child with neuropsychomotor development delay, resulting in 48 sessions during an 8-month period. Results:To facilitate in understanding and to make comparisons among areas, results have been transformed in percentage and will be presented with the values of the first and second evaluation of each child, respectively followed by the value of improvement obtained: child with neuropsychomotor development delay; self-care (11% and 15% - increase of 36%); mobility (1.7% and 3.4% - increase of 100%); social function (6.2% and 7.7% - increase of 24%). The normal child obtained the scores in self-care (34.3% and 43.8% increase of 26%); mobility (79.7% and 81.4% - increase of 2.1%) and social function (24.6% and 33.9% - increase of 37.8%). It is observed that in the two children, as well as in all of the areas of the PEDI, the second evaluation presented improved results, also the percentage of evolution of the values of the child with neuropsychomotor development delay that received hypotherapy service presented larger values of improvement than the normal child. Discussion: Despite several factors that exist which might have interfered in the improvement of test scores of the child with neuropsychomotor development delay, hypotherapy was used and can be a resource that propitiates benefits for the patient.