Efficacy of Oral-Sensory-Motor Intervention in The Management for Drooling of Saliva in Children with Cerebral Palsy - A Cross-Sectional Study

Abstract

Purpose:Drooling of Saliva is one of the major issues that can have a serious effect on the health of those children suffering from it which is often prevalent in children with CP but seldom looked into during therapeutic intervention. Hence, we focused on treating the drooling through oral-sensory-motor intervention (oral-motor therapy + rMV) instead of a medical/surgical intervention and to also assess its efficacy as a management option. Methodology:This is an observational study, administered on 13 children of 5 to 16 years, diagnosed with severe drooling consequent to CP. The efficacy was assessed by comparing the baseline & follow-up scores measured using the Drooling Impact Scale (Reid et al., 2010). Result:The results showed that there was a statistically significant improvement ('t' critical=2.179; p-value ≤ 0.05) in all the 10 parameters. No statistically significant difference was observed with respect to age or type of CP. Conclusion:The study concludes that oral-sensory-motor integration proves to be an effective management to control the drooling of saliva in children with CP. However, to understand the influence of the factors like age or type of CP, further research with larger sample size is warranted. Key words: Cerebral Palsy; Drooling; Behavioural Integration; Sensory-motor Integration; Drooling Impact Scale; Oro-motor exercises.