Children and Adolescents with Posterior Fossa Tumors Demonstrate Excellent Gains in Inpatient Rehabilitation

Research Objectives To evaluate functional outcomes in pediatric patients with newly diagnosed posterior fossa tumors across a course of acute inpatient rehabilitation. Design Cross-sectional retrospective chart review. Setting Pediatric acute inpatient rehabilitation unit at a university-affiliated stand-alone rehabilitation hospital in a metropolitan area. Participants 49 children and adolescents (29M, 20F) aged 8.9±4.9 years admitted to acute inpatient rehabilitation following surgical resection of a posterior fossa tumor. Pathologic diagnoses included medulloblastoma, astrocytoma, ependymoma, and glioma. Interventions Standard of care acute inpatient rehabilitation skilled therapies, including at least 15 hours per week of physical, occupational, speech, feeding, and recreational therapy combined. Main Outcome Measures Change in WeeFIM score from admission to discharge from acute inpatient rehabilitation. Results Improvement in WeeFIM total score from admission (51.5±23.5) to discharge (74.2±28.2) was statistically significant (t(1,28)=4.34, p< 0.0001). The largest gains were noted in the Mobility domain (22.7±11.8%), although the group also demonstrated statistically significant improvements in both Self-Care (19.1±15.5%) and Cognition (14.9±11.8%) domains. Age was positively correlated with larger WeeFIM improvements (p=0.02). Patients with surgical gross total resection also tended to have larger WeeFIM improvements (p=0.04). However admission WeeFIM score, tumor WHO score, presence of metastatic disease, and length of pre-admission acute hospital length of stay were not predictive of change in WeeFIM improvement. Additional analyses found WeeFIM improvement during acute inpatient rehabilitation was similar (p>0.05) in patients receiving concurrent radiation treatment (24.3±16.8) compared to patients that did not receive concurrent radiation treatment (21.3±12.3). Conclusions Children and adolescents with newly diagnosed posterior fossa tumor and associated impairments following surgical resection demonstrate excellent functional gains during a course of acute inpatient rehabilitation. Author(s) Disclosures The authors report no disclosures.