Usability of a Serious Game to Rehabilitate Gaze Stability in Children with Vestibular Deficit: "Kids Gaze Rehabilitation"

Since the early 2000s, vestibular rehabilitation has been proposed as a therapeutic tool to improve the balancing function and the various motor skills in children, in particular in children with hearing loss suffering from concomitant vestibular deficit. It has been demonstrated in adults with vestibular deficit that the fact of adding to the classic exercises on the control of balance per se and habituation, specific exercises of adaptation and substitution of the vestibulo-ocular reflex brought therapeutic benefit. These exercises, which are started in the presence of the physiotherapist and then continued by the patient himself at his home, aim to improve the stabilization of the gaze during head movements. In pediatrics, however, performing them is more difficult than conventional exercises, since their immediate interest is not well understood by the child, who may be reluctant to perform them. The present project aims to enrich the therapeutic offer by a pediatric rehabilitation method of eye stabilization sufficiently playful to win adherence to treatment, including in the absence of the physiotherapist when the child is at home.