The Relationship of Spinal Deformities with Locomotion Components of Kepart Test in Elementary School Students with Dyspraxia

Background and Because of dyspraxia students have difficulty in some movements and deformity of the spine as a factor can lead to restriction of their movement, the purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between vertebral column deformities and components of the Kepart test in students with dyspraxia.Methods and Materials: The present descriptive analytical research is a cross-sectional study, involving the male elementary school students of Tehran in 2009. The participants were selected through multi-stage cluster sampling: Zone 4 was chosen by random from among the 22 municipal districts; 5 schools were selected by random from among many schools in the zone; finally, 1100 students were randomly selected. In the first step, we distributed the questionnaire about the conceptual - movement deficiency (validity 0.86). Eighty students of 8 to 12 years with problems in at least 5 components (out of 14) participated in the Kepart test (validity 0.95). From them, 34 students with the lowest scores were selected as the study subjects. Then, with the use of Spinal – Mouse machine, the vertebrate column deformities of students were studied from frontal and sagital aspects. For analyzing the data, Pearson’s correlation coefficient was used in SPSS 13. The prevalence of deformities was flat back 40%, thoracic kyphosis 29.16% and thoracic scoliosis 20.83% in the subjects. A significant relationship (p=0.05, r=0.34) was found between lumbar lordosis and side walking in students with dyspraxia. Also, the prevalence of dyspraxia was 7.26%, and 2.18% suffered from severe dyspraxia. The results showed that the lower the amount of lumbar lordosis, the lower the students’ ability to side walk.