The benefits of hippotherapy in children with Down Syndrome

In the treatment of a child with Down syndrome, a multidisciplinary team is needed, as well as diff erent therapeutic approaches. This work focuses on the work of the hippotherapy and aims to analyze the impacts of the therapeutic practice of hippotherapy in children with Down syndrome. This is an integrative review of the scientifi c literature with a fi nal sample of 12 national and international articles collected from the PubMed and Virtual Health Library (VHL), using the Scielo databases, Medline, Lilacs and Google Scholar. The investigated articles, nine are case studies without a control group and three with cross-sectional design. The articles show that this therapy seems promising practice in the rehabilitation of children aff ected with Down syndrome. Although they are few approaches to research on the psychosocial impact on children with Down syndrome, studies bring positive remarks. It follows that the practice of hippotherapy can be considered as an approach that works for the treatment of children with Down syndrome. However, the level of evidence presented in the studies show that there is no data in the world scientifi cliterature conclusive to judge benefi ts and risks of the hippotherapy....(AU)