APSIC: Training and fitting amputees during situations of daily living

Today, the prevalence of major amputation in France can be estimated between 90,000 and 100,000 and the incidence is about 8300 new amputations per year (according to French National Authority for Health estimation). This prevalence is expected to increase in the next decade due to the ageing of the population. Even if prosthetic fitting allows amputee people recovering the walking ability, their autonomy remains limited when crossing obstacles such as slopes, stairs or cross-slopes frequently encountered during outdoors displacements. The aim of the project APSIC was to complete scientific knowledge about adaptation strategies to situations of daily living compared to level walking through an extensive motion analysis study of transtibial and transfemoral amputee compared to non-amputee people. APSIC succeeded in identifying physiologic joint functions and current prosthetic joint limitations in the studied situations, which notably resulted in the design of a prototype of ankle-knee prosthesis adapted to multimodal locomotion of transfemoral amputee. Perspectives of the clinical use of motion analysis within the rehabilitation process were explored and proved to be relevant for personalized approach of motor learning

Conductive Hearing Loss Effects on Children's Language and Scholastic Skills

A review of available studies investigating the consequences of conductive hearing loss for language acquisition and scholastic performance was carried out. It uncovered no study that met the standards of rigor needed to provide a definitive answer to this question, although the burden of the evidence is that a persistent mild hearing loss, especially if present since infancy, probably has a measurably deleterious effect on the language of most but not all children. Diagnostic criteria documenting the severity, age of occurrence and duration of middle ear effusions were lacking. Measures of the detrimental effects of conductive losses on linguistic skills frequently were limited to the number of grades children were retained in school, their reading or vocabulary level on achievement tests, or a comparison of their scores on the verbal and performance scales of intelligence tests. Very few studies followed the acquisition of language in affected children or examined its structure. Very few considered the interaction between the socioeconomic and cultural environment of the child and the consequences of his hearing loss. The review underscored the need for prospective multidisciplinary studies in order to evaluate the actual impact of this common pediatric problem.</jats:p

Recruiting Parents of Children with a Fatal Disease as Co-Investigators

Information about Rett syndrome should be imparted to parents of newly diagnosed children by a physician who is familiar with the disease and the care of affected children. Symptomatic treatment should be discussed and a follow-up schedule planned. Parents should be referred to a support group for parents of similarly afflicted children and should be informed about current research efforts. The contribution to knowledge about Rett syndrome that can be made by allowing postmortem examination of the child should be emphasized; parents can thereby be enlisted as co-investigators into this poorly understood disease (J Child Neurol 1988;3(Suppl):S89-S90). </jats:p