Gait improvement in patients with cerebral palsy by visual and auditory feedback

Visual and auditory feedback cues have been shown to improve gait and balance in patients with movement disorders, such as Parkinson's disease and multiple sclerosis. Subsequently, closed-loop virtual reality was used to enhance the gait improvement effect of such cues. Objectives: To study the effects of gait training with visual and auditory feedback cues on the walking abilities of patients with gait disorders due to cerebral palsy. Methods: Visual and auditory feedback cues were generated by a wearable accelerometry-driven device. Ten randomly selected patients with gait disorders due to cerebral palsy trained with visual feedback cues while ten such patients trained with auditory feedback cues. Baseline performance (walking speed and stride length along a 10m straight track) was measured before device use. Following 20min training with the device, performance without the device was measured again and compared to the baseline performance. Results: For patients training with visual feedback, the average improvement in walking speed was 21.70%+/−36.06% and in stride length 8.72%±9.47%. For patients training with auditory feedback, average improvement in walking speed was 25.43%±28.65% and in stride length 13.58%±13.10%. Conclusion: Visual and auditory feedback cues can improve gait parameters in patients with gait disorders due to cerebral palsy.