Kayla Sweeney
This semester I am in early intervention PT for infants and toddlers under the age of 3. This past week in clinic I worked with a child with downs syndrome. One common thing seen in individuals with downs syndrome is decreased tone. This child had very low motor control in her legs and had difficulty standing for long periods of time because her muscles would easily fatigue. After getting an update from her mother and watching the patient crawl around and pull herself up to stand, my CI had me look at her range of motion because she wanted me to see what low tone would look like. We looked at all lower extremity range of motion, but when looking at the ankle, she had so much dorsiflexion that the superior aspect of her foot could almost touch the anterior aspect of her shin. I was very nervous when looking at this motion because I was afraid I was going to hurt the patient, so I didn’t take her through the full range at first. My CI reassured me that I was not going to cause pain, showed me and encouraged me try to find the end range. I was shocked at how much motion was there, however my CI told me that this was less motion than was seen in the previous session the week prior. When standing and taking steps, you could see the patient was having difficulties because of the hypermobility and lack of strength. Because of this, we came up with some functional goals the patient’s mom can be working on with her daughter to help increase strength.