Bone Abstracts

Physiotherapy is one of the most important therapeutic approaches in Osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) besides medical and surgical treatment. At the moment there are no guidelines and no consensus about appropriate physiotherapeutic concepts for children with OI. In each country different preferences regarding the therapeutic approaches (neuro developmental techniques, active and passive training, treadmill training, pool therapy etc) are used. There are hardly any scientific research projects performed to investigate different therapeutic approaches regarding their effectiveness and safety in OI.

The aim of this project is to develop a consensus paper for physiotherapeutic approaches globally for OI-children.

The project will consist of different parts:

1) Preparatory work involving screening of relevant literature, identifying physiotherapists who are experts in the field of OI worldwide and collecting physiotherapeutic approaches and techniques used in different countries. Care4BrittleBones will has an active role to provide input from an OI Community perspective.

2) Forming up a consensus group of experienced physiotherapists from different countries, which will prepare a consensus statement with “recommendations for physical therapy in children with OI”. The experts will be attend a consensus conference prior to the “13^th International Conference on Osteogenesis Imperfecta 2017” in August. The resulting consensus paper, which will be submitted to international journals.

3) When the guideline has been developed it will be actively promoted to be used (communication, networking with OI Community Groups and the professional OI-community, supporting materials) for maximum positive impact on the quality of life of people with OI.

Expected outcome:

In the short term there is an expectation that the consensus statement will provide help for patients and local physiotherapists working with OI children irrespective if they are living in an area without many other people with OI. It makes access to best practices easy and therefore should make a positive impact on quality of life of people with OI.

In the long term this consensus-statement should encourage physicians, physiotherapists and researchers to initiate clinical trials investigating ad comparing different therapeutic approaches to find the most effective way to train mobility and increase independency of children with OI.

Disclosure: The authors declared no competing interests.