Efficacy of Rehabilitation Therapy and Pharmacotherapy on Children with Cerebral Palsy: A Meta-Analysis

BACKGROUND: Cerebral palsy (CP) has a serious impact on children's multiple motor functions and life behavior. Rehabilitation therapy or pharmacotherapy alone has been proven to have a good effect on patients' strength and gait. However, the efficacy of rehabilitation combined with pharmacotherapy for CP in children needs to be further explored. This study is aimed at assessing the effectiveness of this combined method on life function and social behavior in children with CP. METHODS: PubMed, China National Knowledge Infrastructure, WanFang Data, EMBASE, and Web of Science databases were searched for all kinds of literature related to the treatment of pediatric CP published between 2000 and 2021. Basic information and experimental data from the literature were screened and extracted, and a meta-analysis was performed using Stata 16. RESULTS: A total of 605 studies were retrieved, and finally, 10 studies involving 805 pediatric patients were included in the analysis. The analysis results showed that rehabilitation combined with pharmacotherapy could improve the treatment effective rate in children with CP compared with the control group using either alone (RR = 1.184, 95% CI (1.102, 1.273), P < 0.001). In addition, in terms of social behavior, the combined therapy could significantly improve activities of daily living (SMD = 2.94, 95% CI (1.66, 4.22), P < 0.001), motor ability (SMD = 1.86, 95% CI (0.75, 2.96), P = 0.001), adaptability behavior (SMD = 2.82, 95% CI (0.45, 5.18), P = 0.019), language behavior (SMD = 3.08, 95% CI (0.95, 5.22), P = 0.005), social behavior (SMD = 3.78, 95% CI (2.22, 5.35), P < 0.001), and fine motor behavior (SMD = 3.52, 95% CI (1.17, 5.86), P = 0.003). CONCLUSION: The current study shows that rehabilitation combined with pharmacotherapy can effectively improve the recovery, quality of life, and social behavior of children with CP.