Tecnologia assistiva: efeitos do uso da tecnologia assistiva na funcionalidade de crianças com paralisia cerebral

Abstract

Introduction: The use of resources and services that provide or increase functional performance of people with disabilities or with mobility deficits increase independence, autonomy and life quality. Objectives: Analyze, through a literature review, the effects of Assistive Technology use in function performance of children with cerebral palsy. Methods: bibliographic researches were made in the following data basis: Lilacs, Medline, Scielo, Portal Capes and Google Scholar. The key words used were: paralisia cerebral, tecnologia assistive, desempenho funcional, atividades funcionais, and cerebral palsy, assistive thechnology, functional performance, and functional activities. Eight articles about Assistive Technology were included, written from 2002 to 2010, which samples were children with cerebral palsy. Results: the main effects of Assistive Technology use, according to the authors, are the positive influences from the school desk design, with higher scores in motor acuity and increased writing performance; there is no significant difference between inclined desk and no inclined desk in functional performance; higher amount of time spent in manipulation when using canvas sits compared to Wood sits; positive influence from adapted devices (thickened handles) in grasp and substances transportation (short periods of time in displacement); significant effects in the use of thumb abduction orthosis in improving movement extension; the use of weight bracelets helps upper limbs movement, providing more appropriate responses in muscles contraction intensities and lower scaled displacement; flat textures compared with average and rough textures provide higher precision in movement performance with better functional performance during movement trajectory. Conclusion: the articles analyzed in this study give evidences that Assistive Technology use provides positive results when prescribed to people with cerebral palsy and reinforce the need of empirical studies about the efficiency of these devices as well as the need of researches with controlled and randomized designs.