EFFECTIVENESS OF HIPPOTHERAPY AS A KINESIOTHERAPY IN IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF LIFE OF CEREBRAL PALSY PATIENTS: A REVIEW OF LITERATURE

  • Unique Paper ID: 165562
  • Volume: 11
  • Issue: 1
  • PageNo: 1257-1265
  • Abstract:
  • BACKGROUND: Hippotherapy is a therapeutic intervention based on the practice of horsemanship activities that uses the horse as main kinesiotherapy agent. In this there is use of specific techniques of inhibition, facilitation and neuromuscular stimulation facilitating standard motors of more appropriate movements. It was used as study object for subjects with cerebral palsy and various psychological and neurological disorders. The motion of horse imposes perturbations on the rider that differ in magnitude and direction according to gait. In faster gait suspension phases are present, the rider accommodate greater vertical and horizontal accelerations of horse trunk through 3-D movements of their axial body segments. The review addresses the current state of knowledge of literatures, experiments, mechanics, effect and intervention of hippotherapy in various countries like,USA, Germany, Brazil, Sweden, Turkey, Switzerland, Austria. AIM To provide the literatures regarding hippotherapy through the articles or researches which has been published in previous 1997-2023 worldwide. METHODOLGY For this study initially 147 articles were identified through Google Scholar, Google, Pub Med, Medscape, Science Direct, Academia etc., based on key words of this study. In this study 31 articles were excluded due to their obsolete contents and 93 articles were screened, 62 articles assessed for eligibility & 57 articles are added in this study. CONCLUSION Hippotherapy is a treatment modality whose effectiveness has been confirmed in a large patient group with physical & mental disabilities, this field is aware of lack of research and funding. Lack of scientific documentation of benefits is a major obstacle to overcome.

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