Abstract
•Upper extremity burn, despite its severity, has a great impact on ADLs such as eating, dressing, and grooming.•Early and proper physical therapy intervention acts against the potential disability that could develop after burns.•Lack of motivation in the treatment activities is considered as barriers to rehabilitation.•Maintaining the child’s motivation during the treatment is the keystone in the rehabilitation strategy.
Limb burns can cause different functional disorders that greatly impact one’s quality of life.
The purpose of the current study was to compare the effect of Nintendo Wii sports intervention, and traditional treatment methods on spatiotemporal parameters and upper limb function post-burn in children.
Thirty children their age ranging from 7–12 years, with dominant side upper limb burn participated in the study.Vicon3-D motion analysis system and Jebsen hand function test were used to evaluate spatiotemporal parameters (movement duration, peak velocity, and time to peak velocity percentage in three functional tasks) and upper limb function respectively. The children were randomly divided into study and control groups. The study group was rehabilitated with Wii training in addition to traditional therapy, while the control group rehabilitated only with the traditional therapy program. For the study group, the games selected were Wii Bowling, Baseball, and Tennis. Both groups were trained for 60 min daily, three times/week for six weeks. The outcomes were measured pre and post the treatment period.
The whole-time duration and peak velocity improved significantly in the study group across the hand to head task (p = 0.001, p < 0.001, respectively), hand to mouth (p = 0.001), and hand to shoulder (p < 0.001, p = 0.0018, respectively) compared with the control group. The time to peak velocity percentage was enhanced significantly in the study group (p < 0.001) than the control group in all three-measured tasks. Moreover, the Jebsen hand function test improved significantly (p < 0.001) in the study group than in the control group. Conclusion: Wii-habilitation could be advised as an effective tool in the rehabilitation program of children with post-burn injuries.