Stimulation for Perinatal Stroke Optimizing Recovery Trajectory (SPORT)
A BRIGHT Beginnings project
WE ARE WELL ON OUR WAY TO COMPLETING OUR CLINICAL TRIAL TESTING WHETHER NON-INVASIVE BRAIN STIMULATION IMPROVES FUNCTION IN CHILDREN WITH CEREBRAL PALSY (CP).
Principal Investigator: Adam Kirton (University of Calgary)
Looking back:
our work in Phase 1
SPORT Principal Investigator Adam Kirton is chased by four summer camp participants during a water gun fight.
A group of 2022 SPORT summer camp participants.
We are close to successfully completing our pediatric neurostimulation trial: by the end of the 2021-22 fiscal year, 59 children and families had participated in our camp-based therapy programs and achieved many of their personal goals, with another 27 children committed to participating in our 2022 summer camps in Calgary, Edmonton, and Toronto. Participants completed advanced brain imaging and mapping studies before and after the camps, which will help us understand how their brains develop and respond to therapy.
Thanks to these participants, we are on track to determining whether non-invasive brain stimulation in combination with intensive physiotherapy can enhance motor function in children with weakness due to perinatal stroke. We will collect more data from camp participants in February 2023, after which point we will be ready to move ahead with data analysis.
Importantly, connecting kids and families with similar challenges and goals through the summer camps has yielded social and psychological benefits for the participants.
“I had a beyond amazing two weeks participating in the [SPORT summer camp] at Holland Bloorview Hospital,” shared camp participant Simone. “Meeting other kids with the same condition as myself, cerebral palsy, some of whom also have faced similar challenges as me, was an eye-opening experience.”
Overall, the SPORT project has created new opportunities for the integration of research and modern clinical care since its inception over five years ago. In that time, brain stimulation has become a popular treatment. Our findings will offer important information to children and families about this popular treatment, including clear estimates of the relative benefits and risks of non-invasive brain stimulation for children with CP.
Our project is also a good example of some of the challenges of institutional, group-based intensive therapy, as the global pandemic delayed the trial by two years.
We were thrilled to see so many kids and families participate across the country and achieve their goals this year and look forward to continuing this work in Phase 2.
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An eye to the future: what Phase 2 has in store for us
Ben, aged 10, rides his bike without training wheels after participating in a 2022 summer camp.
We’re currently in the planning stage for the next phase of the SPORT project. We have already identified promising avenues for knowledge mobilization (which refers to the co-creation of knowledge by researchers and knowledge users and the use of research results and other knowledge to improve the health care system and its practices to enhance health outcomes) and implementation science (bringing our evidence-based interventions into our health care and community systems) that are directly informed by our Phase 1 study.
Our work in Phase 2 will hinge upon collaboration; we have already engaged with CHILD-BRIGHT leadership, multiple partners from Phase 1, and experts in implementation science as we plan our next steps. We have also already begun recruiting patient- and parent-partners to inform the earliest stages the project.
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