Objective: The most important goal of hippotherapy is to improve function, gait, and balance. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of hippotherapy on function, gait, and balance of children with cerebral palsy (CP). Design: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Methods: We've searched the PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library CENTRAL databases for English experimental studies published up until September 2018. To analyze the effects of hippotherapy on the function, gait, and balance of children with cerebral palsy, the systematic review and meta-analysis were performed on Patient/Participants/Population Problem, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome with Timing, Setting Study Design. Papers retrieved from the database were removed from the literature management database. Methodological quality evaluation was evaluated using Cochrane's risk of bias. Data was analyzed using the Revman 5.3 program of the Cochrane library. Results: In this study, we found that the effect size of hippotherapy, denoted as d, was −3.82, and that hippotherapy had the most effect on gait, but no statistical significant difference was observed. We also found no significant difference in function and balance after hippotherapy. It was found from the funnel plot that there was no publication bias as the plot was symmetrically distributed around the dotted line. Conclusions: There are many unclear studies and a lack of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in this research area. More RCTs on the effects of hippotherapy on children with CP should be conducted in the future.

Objective: This review aims to analyze the effects of electromechanically assisted walking in patients with cerebral palsy(CP). Design: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Methods: We reviewed systematically using the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses) checklist guidelines. The inclusion criteria for this study were all CP patients. The intervention was electromechanically assisted walking. The outcome measures included gait parameters, function, spasticity. Studies excluded from this review were excluded from the review if they were non-English languages and if the study was not published as a full report, and if they were not randomized controlled trials (RCTs) designs. The RevMan 5.4 program was used to evaluate and explain the results. The risk of bias was evaluated independently by two reviewers. The quantitative meta-analysis, including mean differences (MD) and associated standard deviations (SD) from baseline and follow-up assessments, were recorded. Results: A total of 634 articles were searched. Two hundred eighty-nine duplicate articles were excluded, and 345 of 634 originals were left for selection. Of these 74 papers, 44 were out of topic, and 19 reported no mean or standard deviation values. And one was a non-experimental study. Finally, ten studies were included. All 10 RCTs of electromechanically assisted walking were analyzed. The meta-analysis showed a significant improvement in gait cycle (95% CI (confidence intervals), 0.09 to 0.19, I2=0%), Gross Motor Function Measure (GMFM) D (95% CI, 3.27 to 13.17, I2=0%) and GMFM E (95% CI, 0.22 to 6.41, I2=0%). Conclusions: Electromechanically assisted training helps in walking in patients with CP.

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Objective: To investigate the reliability and validity of static balance measurements using an acceleration sensor and a gyroscope sensor in smart phone inertial sensors. Design: Equivalent control group pretest-posttest.Methods: Subjects were forty five healthy adults aged twenty to fifty-years-old who had no disease that could affect the experiment. After pre-test, all participants wore a waist band with smart phone, and conducted six static balance measurements on the force plate twice for 35 seconds each. To investigate the test-retest reliability of both smart phone inertial sensors, we compared the intra-correlation coefficient (ICC 3, 1) between primary and secondary measurements with the calculated root mean scale-total data. To determine the validity of the two sensors, it was measured simultaneously with force plate, and the comparision was done by Pearson's correlation. Results:The test-retest reliability showed excellent correlation for acceleration sensor, and it also showed excellent to good correlation for gyroscope sensor(p＜0.05). The concurrent validity of smartphone inertial sensors showed a mostly poor to fair correlation for tandem-stance and one-leg-stance (p＜0.05) and unacceptable correlation for the other postures (p＞0.05). The gyroscope sensor showed a fair correlation for most of the RMS-Total data, and the other data also showed poor to fair correlation (p＜0.05). Conclusions:The result indicates that both acceleration sensor and gyroscope sensor has good reliability, and that compared to force plate, acceleration sensor has unacceptable or poor correlation, and gyroscope sensor has mostly fair correlation.