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Using Video Games to Foster Pediatric Hand Function
Cleveland FES Center
Motivating kids with physical disabilities to do occupational therapy exercises at home can be challenging. It got a little easier this summer for one of Cleveland Clinic Children’s occupational therapists, Anna Curby, MS, OTR/L. For six weeks, Curby helped two children with hemiplegia caused by cerebral palsy gain motor skills using a home-based treatment of hand therapy video games in combination with Contralaterally-Controlled Functional Electrical Stimulation (CCFES).
“We can give kids all the exercises and checklists in the world, but they have school and friends and other things that distract them,” says Curby. “But when we say, ‘Your home exercise program is to play video games twice a day,’ that’s appealing!”
Curby utilized an intervention developed by Michael Fu, PhD, an investigator with the Cleveland FES Center, a research assistant professor at Case Western Reserve University and a member of the bioscientific staff at MetroHealth Medical Center.