Content Comparison of Aquatic Therapy Outcome Measures for Children with Neuromuscular and Neurodevelopmental Disorders Using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health

Abstract

Currently, aquatic exercise is among the most common physical activity modalities for children with neuromuscular and neurodevelopmental disorders. However, the outcome measures that should be routinely used by therapists working in this specific health-care context have not been widely studied. The purpose of the study was to identify and compare the content of outcome measures used in aquatic physiotherapy for children, employing the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) as a framework. A literature review was used to identify aquatic functioning outcome measures for children with neuromuscular and neurodevelopmental disorders. Content comparison of outcome measures identified was linked to the ICF following the linking guidelines, and content-related metrics were used to analyze them. Four outcome measures were identified (HAAR, Conatser, WOTA 1 and 2, and SWIM), which contained a total of 116 meaningful concepts and were linked to 35 ICF 2nd level categories. The greatest number of items assessed activity and participation categories. Large differences were found in reference to the density of content. For content diversity, the measures were all below 0.5. The identified outcome measurements showed homogeneity with respect to the theoretical foundation; however, some differences were found in terms of content analysis.

Aqua Walking as an Appropriate and Healthy Winter and Summer Physical Practice? An Exploratory Study

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Efeitos do treino aeróbico aquático sobre a cognição de um indivíduo após traumatismo crânio encefálico: estudo de caso

“…23 O corpo imerso em água aquecida também sofre efeitos no sistema nervoso, observando-se o aumento da circulação sanguínea cerebral, aumento da atividade cortical, melhora das funções executivas e aumento na produção de BDNF. 19 Os efeitos do treino aeróbico aquático sobre o sistema cognitivo foram observados em mulheres idosas, em um ensaio clínico comparando esta intervenção com o treino aeróbico em solo. Além da melhora da função cognitiva, foi observado um aumento do BDNF superior ao treino aeróbico fora da piscina.…”

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Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning Methods to Characterize Unstructured Patient-Reported Outcomes: Validation Study

“…PROMIS has applied rigorous standards to develop a comprehensive list of PRO items, therefore serving as a foundation for evaluating PRO contents [33][34][35][36][37]. This mapping process has been adopted in previous research to facilitate the abstraction and mapping of qualitative data [38][39][40]. In this study, the expert-labeled symptoms attributed to each meaning unit were deemed the gold standard for testing the validity of NLP/ML methods.…”