The impact of COVID-19 on the lifestyles of adolescents with cerebral palsy in the Southeast United States.
Byron Lai, Huacong Wen, Tanvee Sinha and 6 others
PMID 35000878WHAT IT FOUND
Most adolescents with cerebral palsy reported less exercise and less contact with friends and family during the pandemic.
Many also had low mood or loss of interest. These are self-reported experiences, not evidence that any treatment worked.
Key findings
01Most participants reported changes in daily activities (90.1%; n = 91), and 52 people (51.5%) reported reduced exercise participation.
0247.5% reported little pleasure in doing things, 32.7% reported feeling down or hopeless, and 64.4% reported feeling more isolated; only 5.9% reported none of these three issues.
03Participants whose lives were affected a lot or a fair amount were more likely to report less exercise (58.9% vs 32.1%, p = 0.016) and less interaction with friends and family (83.6% vs 50%, p = 0.001).
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
Only 101 of 283 families contacted completed the survey. Participants were recruited from one children's hospital in the Southeast United States. Adolescents were instructed to complete the survey with caregiver supervision, or a caregiver could complete it by proxy, and the study did not record or confirm who answered. The modified COV-DIS was not validated for adolescents with cerebral palsy, and its psychometric properties had not been established. The exercise measure and the physically active or inactive cut point were not validated in adolescents with cerebral palsy. Participants compared their life during the pandemic to life before the pandemic by recall, and no pre-pandemic measurements were available. The study was exploratory and did not adjust for multiple statistical tests. The lifestyle impact responses were combined into two groups because of the small sample size.
Declared interests
The supplied text does not include a conflicts-of-interest declaration. The article is labelled Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that reduced exercise, less contact, or more technology use caused a worse pandemic impact. The survey only compared self-reported groups at one time point and did not test an intervention.