Effectiveness of resistance training exercises in spastic diplegia cerebral palsy: A review

Abstract

Cerebral Palsy presents itself in a clinical form of spastic diplegia, where neurological sequels are predominant in the lower limbs and substantially affects the capacity to walk. Traditional methods of physiotherapy intervention emphasize the techniques of neurological rehabilitation at the expense of progressive resistance exercises. The goal of the present research is to fulfill a bibliographic review concerning the period of 1985 to 2012 about studies that investigated the effect of resistance exercises applied to cerebral palsy children carrying spastics' diplegia. The Scielo, MEDLINE, PubMed, EMBASE, CINAHL, Sports Discus, DARE, PsychInfo, ERIC, Ausport-Med, AMI, Cochrane and PEDro databases were used to conduct a literature search using keywords without restrictions. In this systematization, a search was conducted using the keywords: cerebral palsy, progressive resistance exercise, diplegia, gross motor function measure (GMFM). Literature have shown that the restrict capacity to generate force is as debilitating or more than it is the muscle spasticity, potentially causing more restriction to the movement than the spasticity itself. Children with normal motor development, as well as carrying spastic diplegia increase their capacity to generate strength when submitted to a resistive training, not only on lower limbs, but also on upper limbs. Furthermore, several studies have shown that diplegic cerebral palsy children improve their motor ability due to strength training, thought it still remains to be proved that strength training leads to a substantial change for the better allowing that there is ascension of category for functional capacity.