La tecnica termografica nella riabilitazione equestre del soggetto autistico

The aim of this experimental work was to verify if the thermographic technique (IRT) could be used during the sessions of hippotherapy to highlight a possible emotion and/or stress in autistic children and animals by means of any change in surface temperature. It was verified whether the different phases of the hippotherapeutic session were characterized by different temperatures that could be related to the physiological or emotional status of subjects. The trial was carried out at “Centro Ippico Meisino”, near Turin, over the period March-November 2013 on three autistic children nine to twelve years old during their equestrian rehabilitation. The data were analyzed by the SAS ® software. The analysis considered the periocular temperatures recorded at the various stages of the session and the differences between them, separately for children and horses. The significance of differences was tested by ANOVA model for repeated measures. The different phases were: before working; when the child goes up to the horse; during the working session; after work during the horse's care; during the half an hour after children and horses were separated. The IRT images were able to detect significant differences of periocular temperature between the various phases, both for children than horses, when the environmental temperature was low (up to 10°C P<0,001). No significant differences were found for the classes of average and high temperatures (> 10 °C). It is extremely interesting that the eye’s area trend was the same for horse and children at low environmental temperatures. The periocular temperatures started at 33.0 °C (horses) and 33.3 °C (children) in the first phase, then decreased in the two working phases (32.0 °C horses and 30.9 °C children), before recovering in the last two phases after work (32.6 °C horses and 32.2°C children) . No hard physic work for humans or children was did during working sessions. The decreasing of the periocular temperature during the working phase may be due to vasoconstriction related to different emotional state. This pilot study has highlighted the potential of the IRT as non invasive technique to detect small differences in periocular temperature as an objective parameter both in humans than in horses, during the hippotherapeutic sessions. Other studies are needed to better understand relation between periocular temperature and ambiental conditions and to relate periocular temperature changes to the subjects emotional status.