What Change Was Caused under Short Time Treatment by the Ueda Method for Severely Disabled Infants with Cerebral Palsy ?
Report of Two Cases
1998 Volume 30 Issue 1 Pages 75-79
Details
1998 Volume 30 Issue 1 Pages 75-79
A new physical therapy, Ueda method (UM), were performed on two patients with severe motor and intellectual disabilities syndrome and spastic cerebral palsy (CP). The period of the UM therapy was 5 days in one case with spastic CP and 10 days in another case with rigo-spastic CP. They showed the remarkable reduction of abnormal muscle tone and interesting phenomena such as postural changes of extremities and changes of some primitive reflexes.
First, peculiar postures of treated extremities appeared on the first day of the UM therapy, associated with the reducing muscle tone of extremities only in the treated side. One case showed immediate change of the posture of treated upper extremity from internal to external rotation of the shoulder joint. Another case disclosed immediate appearance of internal rotation of the hip joint of the treated lower extremity and scissoring posture of legs. These phenomena were transient and disappeared under the UM treatment.
Secondly, interesting phenomena in some primitive reflexes were observed after the beginning of the UM therapy. Moro reflex was elicited only in the treated upper extremity, which could not be obtained by stimuli before the UM therapy. After the UM therapy on bilateral arms, Moro reflex appeared bilaterally in two cases. On the other hand, the degree of asymmetrical tonic neck reflex (ATNR) in one case with spastic CP reduced on 5th days under the UM therapy. In another case with rigo-spastic CP automatic walking disappeared on 3rd days after the UM therapy and ATNR appeared.
The first phenomena could be due to imbalances of the reduced muscle tones by the UM therapy. Second phenomena could result from the interaction between the nervous systems of Moro reflex, ATNR and automatic walking and the nervous system owing to the abnormal muscle hypertone. Moro reflex might be supressed by abnormal muscle hypertone. The disappearance of some primitive reflexes might not depend on the maturation of the central snervous system.
