Health Surveillance along with Application of Age-based Scheduled Training Program for Down syndrome

Abstract

Rehabilitation of the family of DS child to provide long-standing follow-up and support as well as the early detection of different health problems. A prospective observational study was accomplished on 65 children with DS selected randomly from the outpatient clinic of pediatric genetics. Application of Health Supervision Guidelines for Individuals with DS for specialized management and monitoring based on different of age groups. Also, the parents of DS children underwent scheduled training plan for solving their children difficulties as hypotonia and associated problem as feeding problem, cervical spine problem and hip dislocation by doing prefeeding exercises and some home physiotherapy in weekly visits. Then these children were evaluated at the end of every four months to assess outcome and retraining of the caregivers as needed. The prevalence of the most associated health problem with DS was the speech difficulty followed by iron deficiency anemia, medically treated ear problems , physical disability , urinary and bowel incontinence ,feeding problems, hypothyroidism and bilateral SNHL (72%, 64.6% , 35%, 33%, 29.2%, 24.6%, 16.9%, 10.7% respectively). After application of our scheduled training program, 84% of trained parents carried out prefeeding exercises, 86% of children showed adequate positioning during feeding as well as improved child cooperation during feeding. Furthermore, 84% got balanced nutritious diet. 68% of children developed urinary control by daytime whereas 60% developed urinary control by day and night. 81% showed improvement in bowel control by decreased frequency of encopresis. An effective early intervention, positive home environment and continuous supportive training of mothers of children with DS are helpful in improving the overall functioning and productivity of these children.