Assessing the Therapeutic Impact of Virtual Reality Interventions on Upper Limb Range of Motion and Functional Mobility in Pediatric Patients with Spastic Hemiplegic Cerebral Palsy: A Faisalabad-based Study

Abstract

Cerebral palsy is a non-progressive central nervous system injury, most common in children, resulting from the damage to brain. Objectives: To see the effects of non-immersive virtual reality on range of motion, muscle strength, spasticity and functional mobility of upper limb in spastic hemiplegic cerebral palsy children. Methods: This was a quasi-experimental study, in which participants were selected through simple random sampling on the basis of defined selection criteria, there were two groups. Group A received conventional physical therapy exercises and group B was a received functional mobility exercises using non-immersive virtual reality. Data collection tools included Modified Ashworth scale to measure the spasticity, Functional assessment scale for functional status, Goniometer was used to measure the rage of mobility and Manual muscle testing MMT was used to measure the strength. Data was analyzed by SPSS version 26. Results: Mean age of children was 9.818 ± 2.639. From total participants 63.6% were males and 36.4% were females CP child. Paired-t test sowed that, there was a statistically significant difference in means of all outcome measures before and after treatment in group-A as well as in group–B (p-value<0.05). Between-group analysis of A and B showed a statistically significant difference with p-value ≤0.05. Conclusions: Both groups showed improvement in spasticity, functional status, range of motion and muscle strength, but treatment group receiving functional mobility exercises using non-immersive virtual reality was found to be more effective than the control group.