Motor coordination patterns in children with developmental coordination disorder and spastic cerebral palsy. Abstracts of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the EACD (Virtual)

Motor coordination patterns in children withdevelopmental coordination disorder and spasticcerebral palsyN SMEETS1,2,MDEGELAEN2,3,4,RBAEYENS6,JP BAEYENS4,5,MVANDENEEDE2,AJANSEN1,2,BDAN31UZ Brussel, Department of Paediatrics, Child Neurology Unit, Brussels, Belgium;2Centrum voor Ontwikkelingsstoornissen Brussel, Brussels, Belgium;3Rehabilitation Hospital Inkendaal, Vlezenbeek, Belgium;4Faculty of PhysicalEducation & Physical Therapy, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Brussels, Belgium;5University College Thim van der Laan, Landquart, Switzerland;6Faculty ofApplied Engineering Sciences, CoSys Lab, Universiteit Antwerpen, Antwerpen,BelgiumIntroduction: Impaired motor performance significantly impactsparticipation and emotional wellbeing in both developmentalcoordination disorder (DCD) and cerebral palsy (CP). The diag-nosis of both conditions is based on clinical features, and it issometimes challenging to distinguish between them. The aim ofthis preliminary study is to test the feasibility of an approach gen-erating objective parameters of motor coordination in DCD andCP.Patients and Methods: Six children aged 9 or 10 years with DCD(n=2), bilateral spastic CP (n=2, GMFCS levels I and II) or typicaldevelopment (n=2). Full body 3D-kinematics was recorded usingVICON Nexus 2.11.0 with 35 markers while the child repeatedlyperformed the jumping in place-opposite sides synchronized taskfrom the BOTMP-2. Intersegmental coordination was analysedwith continuous relative phase plots. Mean absolute relative phase(MARP) was calculated to quantify the relationship between bodysegments.Results: In the typically developing children MARP was (asexpected) out-of-phase between left and right humerus (LH-RH),and humerus and ipsilateral femur (H-IF). MARP was in-phasebetween humerus and contralateral femur (H-CF). In childrenwith DCD MARP was more in-phase for LH-RH and H-IF, andmore out-of-phase for H-CF. The child with CP in GMFCSlevel I showed even more in-phase relations for LH-RH and H-IF; and an even more out-of-phase relationship for H-CF. Thechild with CP in GMFCS level II was not able to perform a rep-resentative jump.Conclusion: We present a feasible method to quantify differencesin motor coordination in children who can perform the task