Developmental Advancements Following Chiropractic Care in a Four-year-old Child With Dyspraxia and Associated Developmental Delays: A Case Report
SOURCE: Journal of Clinical Chiropractic Pediatrics 2015; 15 (1) ~ FULL TEXT
Jordenne Troy 1, Tara Dennis 1 and Alice Cade 2 BSc, B Chiro, DICCP
1. Senior Intern,
New Zealand College of Chiropractic,
Auckland, New Zealand
2. Lecturer and Intern Mentor,
New Zealand College of Chiropractic,
Auckland, New Zealand
Objective: To present the chiropractic management of a 4-year-old child diagnosed with dyspraxia and concomitant vertebral subluxations.
Clinical Features: A four-year-old boy with a history of developmental motor delays was presented by his mother for chiropractic evaluation. The child was previously diagnosed with dyspraxia at one year of age, based on a delay in developmental milestones being met; specifically of speech and fine motor control. The patient was 1.25-years-old before starting to walk and 3-years-old before being able to produce any basic sounds such as “Ma” or “Da”.
At the commencement of chiropractic care the child was undergoing concomitant speech therapy; six weeks of intensive repetitive therapy was the average amount of time required for the patient to learn and retain one new sound or word.
Intervention: Modified Diversifed (Touch-and-hold) and Sacro-Occipital Techniques were utilized to reduce subluxation indicators through the cranium, upper cervical and lumbopelvic spine. Fifteen adjustments were administered over a 4-month period.
Outcome: The child experienced a number of developmental advancements over the duration of chiropractic care, specifically in speech, fine motor control and coordination. After 8 visits the patient learned 20 new words in one week, after 12 visits all primitive reflexes were tested to be within normal limits and after 15 visits their vocabulary consisted of hundreds of words and continued to expand.
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Conclusion: This patient experienced significant developmental advancements while receiving chiropractic care. Additional research is necessary to assess the role chiropractors may play in caring for children with developmental delays.
Key words: Dyspraxia, developmental delays, chiropractic, pediatric, vertebral subluxation.
From the Full-Text Article:
Introduction
Developmental delay is used to describe a child who does not reach the predicted developmental milestones at the expected times; delay can occur in one or many areas, including gross or fine motor control, speech and language development, cognitive/intellectual development and social and emotional development. [1] Children with developmental delays often have retained primitive reflexes. It has been documented that when a cluster of primitive reflexes remain they are counterproductive to normal neural maturation, contributing to developmental delays. [2]
Developmental dyspraxia, developmental delay syndrome, developmental coordination disorder or perceptuomotor dysfunction is a neurologically based disorder of unknown etiology that affects motor skill development. [3] Individuals with dyspraxia experience difficulty planning and executing tasks that require fine motor skills, affecting any or all areas of development including physical, intellectual, emotional, social, language and sensory. Each individual with dyspraxia is affected in a different way, at different stages of development and with differing severity. It is estimated that up to 10% of individuals in New Zealand are affected by some degree of dyspraxia with approximately 2% of those individuals being severely affected and 70% of all those affected being male. [3, 4]
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