Intensive hippotherapy in children diagnosed with infantile paralysis and its short-term and intermediate effect

Hippotherapy belongs to the family of proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation methods. It especially benefits the rehabilitation care of complex neurological patients. This paper theoretically examines the methodology of hippotherapy. Further, this paper examines an evaluative survey of 21 subjects after intensive hippotherapy who were initially diagnosed with cerebral palsy. The immediate, short and medium term effect of the therapy was exami-ned. For the evaluation the intercondylic index, Collis symptom and position reaction tests were used. The testing is complemented with a questionnaire filled in by parents with 11 pa-rameters, which included changes in the functions of knowledge and psyche of the child. The results show that there is a statistically significant improvement in all examined parameters after immediate and weekly therapy. Thus this method can be recommended as a possible approach to the therapy of children with cerebral palsy. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org