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영어

The purpose of this study is to analyze the lengths of the medial and lat-eral gastrocnemius and soleus muscles in children with spastic hemi-plegic cerebral palsy to quantitatively assess the structural differences in skeletal muscles. This study included 10 children with spastic cere-bral palsy and 10 children with typically development. To assess the changes in the length of the ankle plantar flexor due to cerebral palsy, we utilized both gait analysis and software for interactive musculoskel-etal modeling to model skeletal muscle length. With this model, the dif-ferences in the lengths of the medial and lateral gastrocnemius and so-leus muscles were assessed at different knee (0°, 45°, and 90°) and an-kle (-10°, 0°, 15°, and 30°) angles. Muscle length on the paretic group was shorter than the typically developing and nonparetic group for all three muscles (medial and lateral gastrocnemius and soleus muscles) for knee and ankle angles. These results were not statistically signifi-cant. Normalized muscle lengths in the dynamic/static status revealed a significant difference in the length of the lateral gastrocnemius mus-cle between the cerebral palsy and typically developing group. I ob-served muscle shortening on the paretic side of the children with cere-bral palsy. This finding suggests that the recovery of plantar flexor length is the most important issue that must be resolved for normal gait and motor function.