Research & Innovation | Overview
By bringing together a variety of specialists, our team in the Neuromotor Therapy Program is able to provide a comprehensive evaluation of your child’s movement challenges and to consider all possible treatments, including physical and occupational therapy, medications, surgery and speech and language therapy.
Medical therapy
Medications or surgeries that we may recommend include:
- Oral medications: Children with increased muscle tone or spasticity may benefit from medications that relax the muscles.
- Injected medications: In certain cases, we may recommend injected medications such as botulinum toxin (Botox) to specific muscles.
- Implanted devices: Other children may benefit from an implanted pump that delivers a continual infusion of the medication baclofen in a child’s spinal fluid.
- Surgery: For some children, we may consider an operation called selective dorsal rhizotomy, which is aimed at reducing spasticity in the legs. Certain children with longstanding muscle function issues that cause abnormal growth of the bones and joints may need orthopedic surgery.
Communication
The ability to communicate is especially critical to children’s development. Children whose motor difficulties impair their ability to express themselves often face major developmental and educational obstacles. So we place special importance on helping your child communicate to the best of her abilities.
To help children communicate, we collaborate with the Augmentative Communication Program at Boston Children’s Hospital. This program uses a variety of innovative strategies to enable children to communicate effectively. You can find out about the work of this program at their website.
In our Neuromotor Therapy Program, we try to improve specific motor functions that will maximize your child’s ability to use the communication technologies recommended by the specialists in the Augmentative Communication Program. This may include helping him use tools such as joysticks, keyboards, or head switches.