Laura Peeters

Trunk, head and pelvis interactions in healthy children | 57 3 The median and interquartile ranges for maximum neck ROM are shown in Figure 4. Notable is that also upper thoracic movement (median of 11.6°) was seen when performing the head movements. There was no significant difference between left and right lateral bending (p=0.281) and axial rotation (p=0.386), and flexion - extension (p=0.463). Trunk movement in reaching and ADL When reaching forward to a target, trunk ROM in the sagittal plane increased with reaching height, distance and object weight (Figure 5). This increase was significant for almost all segments and with all reaching conditions (Table 1). The more caudal segments (pelvis and lower lumbar segment) showed a flexion movement when reaching forward, while the more cranial segments (upper lumbar and both thoracic segments) showed an extension movement. Lateral bending significantly increased for both thoracic segments and for some reaching conditions in the lumbar segments with all reaching conditions, however this was inconsistent between the reaching conditions (Table 1). There was no consistent, significant increase in axial rotation ROM between the reaching conditions and segments, however quite some trunk axial rotation could be seen in all reaching tasks. Comparable results were found when reaching laterally (Figure 6). The thoracic segments showed a significant increase in ROM with reaching height, distance and object weight in the frontal plane (Table 2). The pelvis showed a significant increase in ROM with reaching distance and object weight in this plane. In the sagittal plane, both lumbar segments and the upper thoracic segment showed a significant increase with reaching height, distance and object weight. In the transverse plane, only the pelvis showed a consistent, significant increase in ROM with reaching distance and object weight, but not for reaching height. Trunk movement could be seen in all planes when performing daily activities (Figure 7), even though the activities were within arm length distance. However, the median ROM was often close to zero. Of all the performed tasks, drawing seemed to be the only task where the more cranial trunk segments showed a flexion movement. Statistical analyses for differences in ROM between segments when performing reaching or ADL tasks, were not performed because of the high variance due to the fact that no specific instructions were given how to perform the tasks. This made it questionable what a significant difference would indicate. Nevertheless, note that the distribution of ROM over trunk segments in all reaching and daily tasks seems quite comparable with the contribution found when performing the maximum trunk movement tasks. The thoracic segments were mostly involved in lateral bending, the lower thoracic segment was mostly involved in axial rotation and the distribution