Abstract

Background. Early diagnosis and therapy of infants with central coordination disorder (CCD) ensure maximum therapeutic benefits of nervous system plasticity. Therefore, one of the main aims of modern paediatric physiotherapy is to create a system for objective and early diagnosis in order to enable early institution of appropriate evidence-based therapy. The aim of this study was to evaluate body position dissymmetry in infants on the basis of clinical findings and podoscopic assessment in healthy infants and infants presenting with CCD, thus constituting the first step towards objective evaluation of psychomotor development. The Podo Baby device for the assessment of infants registers the surface of contact with the infant’s body on the right and left sides in the prone and supine positions, thus allowing an assessment of the infant’s body position dissymmetry. Material and methods. The study involved two groups of infants: five healthy infants and five infants with a diagnosis of central coordination disorder. The diagnosis was made on the basis of Vojta’s clinical assessment and a podoscopic evaluation with the Podo Baby device.Results. This experiment showed a good fit between the results of the clinical and podoscopic evaluations. There was a difference in dissymmetry between the healthy and neurologically impaired infants. All healthy infants showed differences between body weight distribution percentages on the right and left sides of less than 18%, while the infants with CCD revealed differences of up to 66%. Conclusion. The Podo Baby device may make clinical diagnosis more objective.

Key words:

Podo Baby, dissymmetry of infants, paediatric diagnosis, central coordination disorder