Audiovisual stimulation in children with severely limited motor function: does it improve their quality of life?

Introduction. Children with neurological diseases that impose severe limitations on their mobility have a deficient quality of life (QL). Aims. To study whether the QL of such patients improves with the application of a programme of audiovisual stimulation. Patients and methods. A prospective study was conducted on nine children, six of whom were males (mean age: 42.6 +/- 28.6 months), with severely limited mobility and who had been hospitalised for long periods. Two audiovisual stimulation programmes were produced and applied, together with videos, by means of a specially designed structure. The stimulus was applied twice a day for 10 minutes over 20 days. The first ten days the stimulus was carried out in a passive manner and the second block of ten days it was performed with the guidance of the observer. Biological, behavioural and cognitive variables were recorded and an adapted QL survey was applied. Results. Three cases of spinal muscular atrophy, two of congenital muscular dystrophy, two of myopathy and two with other conditions were diagnosed. Eight patients completed the follow-up. From the baseline point of view, they presented a regular QL (7.2 +/- 1.7 points; median: 7.0; range: 6-10), which improved to good on finishing the therapy (9.4 +/- 1.2 points; median: 9.0; range: 8-11), with an intra-individual difference of 2.1 +/- 1.6 (median: 2.5; range: -1 to 4; CI 95% = 0.83-3.42; p = 0.006). Improved cognition and a favourable perception in the caregivers were detected. No changes took place in the biological or behavioural variables. Conclusions. Audiovisual stimulation can be used to enhance the quality of life of children with severely limited mobility.