ORLAU is a clinical department of the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital. We treat patients with a wide range of movement disorders affecting their walking or arm function. One of the most common gait issues we see is toe-walking, this is most prevalent in those patients with cerebral palsy (CP). Toe-walking in CP children arises mostly from problems in the calf muscle, we currently use gait analysis to help guide treatment management plans. Two standard interventions for such cases are serial casting and Botulinum Toxin-A injections. Using gait analysis we will be able to see changes to the gait pattern before and after the interventions, however, we want to obtain a whole clinical picture, using B-mode ultrasound, elastography and electromyography (EMG) we will be able to achieve this. These measurements will provide us with information about the muscle architecture and properties including activation. This will help us to determine the effects of the interventions. Elastography is a fairly new clinical technique that uses shear waves generated by the ultrasound probe to map the stiffness of a muscle. Stiffness of muscle is a good indication of myopathies. The additional examinations we want to carry out are all non-invasive, they will be carried out in two sessions, one before the intervention and one after. We will compare the data we collect from the children with CP to our normal database with ORLAU has ethical approval for. The final stage of this study will be to use the muscle parameters obtained by ultrasound to set parameters in a computer musculoskeletal model.
Age range
4 Years – 16 Years
Sex
ALL
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Are there gait (kinetic) differences pre and post intervention in toe walking cerebral palsy subjects?
Timeframe: up to12 weeks
Are there gait (kinematic) differences pre and post intervention in toe walking cerebral palsy subjects?
Timeframe: up to 12 weeks
Triceps Surae muscle activation during the gait cycle (Electromyography)
Timeframe: up to12 weeks
Are there morphological differences in the calf muscle pre and post serial casting/botulinum toxin-A intervention in toe walking cerebral palsy subjects?
Timeframe: up to 12 weeks
Are there morphological differences in the calf muscle pre and post serial casting/botulinum toxin-A intervention in toe walking cerebral palsy subjects?
Timeframe: up to 12 weeks
Are there morphological differences in the calf muscle pre and post serial casting/botulinum toxin-A intervention in toe walking cerebral palsy subjects?
Timeframe: up to 12 weeks
Are there morphological differences in the calf muscle pre and post serial casting/botulinum toxin-A intervention in toe walking cerebral palsy subjects?
Timeframe: up to 12 weeks
Are there morphological differences in the calf muscle pre and post serial casting/botulinum toxin-A intervention in toe walking cerebral palsy subjects?
Timeframe: up to 12 weeks
Difference in the muscle stiffness values (using elastography) in the calf muscle pre and post intervention.
Timeframe: up to 12 weeks