Lower Limb Rehabilitation in Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis using Serious Games

TL;DR

This paper introduces a framework using serious games to enhance lower limb rehabilitation for children with Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis, aiming to improve motivation and adherence to therapy through engaging video games.

Contribution

It presents a novel framework integrating therapeutic games with modules for customization, control, and analysis tailored for JIA rehabilitation in children.

Findings

Positive feedback from patients and therapists

Games increased engagement and motivation

Preliminary validation showed promising results

Abstract

Patients undergoing physical rehabilitation therapy must perform series of exercises regularly over a long period of time to improve, or at least not to worsen, their condition. Rehabilitation can easily become boring because of the tedious repetition of simple exercises, which can also cause mild pain and discomfort. As a consequence, patients often fail to follow their rehabilitation schedule with the required regularity, thus endangering their recovery. In the last decade, video games have become largely popular and the availability of advanced input controllers has made them a viable approach to make physical rehabilitation more entertaining while increasing patients motivation. In this paper, we present a framework integrating serious games for the lower-limb rehabilitation of children suffering from Juvenile Idiopathic Arthritis (JIA). The framework comprises games that implement parts of the therapeutic protocol followed by the young patients and provides modules to tune, control, record, and analyze the therapeutic sessions. We present the result of a preliminary validation we performed with patients at the clinic under therapists supervision. The feedback we received has been overall very positive both from patients, who enjoyed performing their usual therapy using video games, and therapists, who liked how the games could keep the children engaged and motivated while performing the usual therapeutic routine.