Relationship between trunk control and gross motor development of infants in the first year of life: A systematic review

to verify the relationship between the level of trunk control and the acquisition of gross motor skills in the first year of life. a searching strategy was developed using the PICO tool and performed in the databases PubMed, Cochrane Library, Virtual Library in Health, Embase, and Scopus, from September 2020 to July 2022. The methodological quality of the articles was evaluated by the Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale Cohort Studies (NOS). six studies that evaluated the level of trunk control and gross motor development in infants aged 4 to 12 months were found. Four studies evaluated full-term infants, and only two studies evaluated preterm infants comparing them to full-term ones. Five studies showed high methodological quality and one study, low methodological quality. Most studies found significant correlation between the levels of segmental trunk control (static, active, and reactive), by the Segmental Assessment Trunk Control (SATCo), and gross motor development (prone, supine, sitting, standing, and walking) by the Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS). trunk control is directly related to gross motor development in different postures in infants between 7 and 12 months. •Because of easy applicability and low cost, AIMS and SATCo are instruments used to direct the intervention in infants.•The assessment of gross motor development and segmental trunk control provides information that can help therapeutic decision-making.•The motor performance evaluated by AIMS can be related to the levels of trunk control