Escale is a hospital
unit which cares for physically disabled children living with their families.
Motor and cognitive assessments are carried out in order to propose the most
appropriate physical, medical and surgical therapies to parents. Eight to nine
hundred different children are seen each year; about 15% of them suffer from
neuromuscular disorders. Using the scale designed for children with cerebral
palsy in Canada, the Gross Motor Function Measure (GMFM) (D. Russell Dev Med
Child Neurol 1989; 31:341-352,
CanChild,
The Centre for Childhood Disability Research), l’Escale translated
it under the name Evaluation Motrice Fonctionelle Globale (
Handicap
International) and developed a training course in French with the collaboration
of the Institut International Superieur de Formation des Cadres de Sante (Hospices
Civils de Lyon).
In the the absence
of a clinical assessment tool adapted to the care of young children with neuromuscular
diseases (spinal muscular atrophy, congenital myopathy,...), the GMFM has been
utilized for these children although this test has not been validated for these
disorders.
Instead of validating the GMFM for neuromuscular disorders, the Escale group
preferred to construct a new test called the “Motor Function Measure for
Neuromuscular Diseases.”
