Physical performance of children and adolescents with longitudinal fibular deficiency

This thesis builds on the current available literature concerning the physical performance of children and adolescents with Longitudinal Fibular Deficiency (LFD). Currently, the understanding of physical performance in LFD is predominantly limited to small studies of low methodological quality that have used non-validated or subjective-report measures. The only examples of physical performance being assessed with objective measures and compared to norms are limited to the adult population of LFD, which demonstrated adults with LFD perform at a much lower level than their unaffected peers. It is unknown if this is also true in children with LFD. Therefore, a cross-sectional study was conducted to compare the physical performance of 3 children and adolescents with LFD, to 284 unaffected peers of the same age, using validated objective measures. Children and adolescents with LFD performed significantly worse than their peers in strength, walking performance, performance on stairs, and balance. The difference between the physical performance of children and adolescents with LFD and those without was smallest in younger children and greatest in the older adolescents. These findings suggest close monitoring of children with LFD may assist in the timing of interventions to potentially improve such performance. Further research is recommended,both of a longitudinal nature to understand how the physical performance of children with LFD changes with age, in addition to research assessing the efficacy of interventions aiming to improve physical performance in these children and adolescents.