Estudo da inicialização da marcha em crianças: do andar independente ao andar maduro

Abstract

The study of gait provides information about gait, assists in diagnosis, monitoring and, when necessary, in the establishment of an appropriate treatment, whether physical therapy and/or surgery. However, the study of children's gait has particularities and specific characteristics. The present study describes the initialization pattern of children's gait that are found from the independent gait acquisition phase to the mature gait phase and to analyze the biomechanical variables that can intervene in the child's motor development and functional mobility. For this, the study is structured in chapters: 1) of bibliographic origin, in which the main concepts and information on the subject are gathered; 2) literature review, in paper I, presenting the measurement methods in biomechanics and their respective techniques used for evaluation, since different evaluation methods can generate different results in the understanding of the mechanisms of gait initiation in children; 3) in paper II, dynamometry was used as a method of investigation, through the pressure platform, the analysis of the behavior of the center of pressure, during the initialization phase of the gait of typical children who are in the phase of acquisition of the independent walking aged between 1.7 and 3 years; 4) for paper III, the behavior of the center of pressure was compared in order to analyze two periods of childhood in order to obtain information on how the body reacts to postural instabilities from the start of gait in the maturation phase of walking. independently, in children aged 6 and 9 years. From the results obtained from the data, information was gathered on balance strategies and children's behavior from the beginning of independent walking, reducing asymmetries, to the maturational stage of gait, that is, of mature walking without conscious effort