Abstract
Background: One of the important goals in the treat-ment of spastic cerebral palsy is to maintain efficient and effective walking in order to be independent in activities and participate in society.Objective: To compare the efficacy of foot combina-tion taping of kinesio tape and athletic tape vs ankle foot orthosis in correcting spatiotemporal gait para-meters in children with spastic diplegia. Methods: Thirty-six children with spastic diplegia were randomly assigned into 3 groups; control, combination taping, and ankle foot orthosis groups. Children in the control group, in addition to those in both experimental groups, continued with conven-tional physical therapy, 1 h, 3 times per week for 4 weeks. Spatiotemporal gait parameters were asses-sed with the GAITRite system before and after the application of interventions.Results: There were significant increases in walking velocity, step length, stride length, right single support duration, and left single support duration of the ankle foot orthosis and combination taping groups compared with pre-intervention values. Moreover, the post-intervention values of the double support dura-tion of the ankle foot orthosis and combination taping groups were significantly lower than pre-intervention values. There were no significant differences between the post-intervention values of the ankle foot orthosis and combination taping groups for all parameters.Conclusion: The results demonstrated that combina-tion taping is an effective alternative technique to ankle foot orthosis to improve spatiotemporal para-meters in children with spastic diplegic in combina-tion with conventional physiotherapy.