Avaliação do equilíbrio estático e dinâmico em crianças de 1ª série do ensino fundamental com e sem dificuldades escolares

Abstract

Body position, eyes movements and spatial perception are controlled by the vestibular system as it is responsible by the balance body maintenance. Posture, balance and motor coordination has been seen as an important basis for language, writing and learning acquisition. Objective: this study has as objective to investigate the performance of a group of children aged between 6 and 8 years in a behavior evaluation of vestibular system and its relationship to academic difficulties. Method: The sample was composed by 38 children distributed in two groups: A with academic difficulties, and B without academic difficulties. All children were submitted to: otoscopy, audiometric and tympanometric screening, static and dynamic balance tests, and head shake tests. Parents/caregivers answered questions in closed set format about balance, hearing and learning. Teachers informed about children difficult to learn. Results: Data showed that percentage of more common complain were: fall down, sport and dizziness and that those complain were statistically significant when both group were compared. Analysis of vestibular tests showed that just Romberg Test was significant to learning difficulties. There were 4 children with vestibular dysfunction and learning difficulties. It means that 4:38 were highly suspect to have a vestibular disease. Conclusion: Findings shown that vestibular symptom complain are very common in children but just for the Romberg test was found a significant relationship for some of the vestibular complain. Another relationship that has been found was between the learning problems complain by parents/caregivers and learning difficulties by the teachers