Cerebral Palsy

Have you ever heard a family member talk about your first step or the first word you spoke? For children with cerebral palsy, also called CP for short, taking a first step or saying a first word is not as easy. That's because CP is a condition that can affect the things that kids do everyday. Some children with cerebral palsy use wheelchairs and others walk with the help of crutches or braces. In some cases, a child's speech may be affected or the person might not be able to speak at all.

No one knows for sure what causes most cause of cerebral palsy. For some babies, injuries to the brain during pregnancy or soon after birth may cause cerebral palsy. Children most at risk of developing CP are small, premature babies and babies who need to be on a ventilator for several weeks or longer. But for most children, the problem in the brain occurs before the baby is born, and doctors don't know why.

Cerebral palsy is a condition that affects thousands of babies and children each year. It is not contagious, which means you cannot catch it from anyone who has it. The word cerebral means having to do with the brain and the word palsy means a weakness or problem in the way a person moves or positions his or her body (Bachrach 1). A kid with CP has trouble controlling the muscles of the body. Normally, the brain tells the rest of the body exactly what to do and when to do it. Because cerebral palsy affects the brain, depending on what part of the brain is affected, a child might not be able to walk, eat, or play the way most children do (Miller 3). When physicians diagnose cerebral palsy in an individual child, they look at risk factors, the symptoms, the mother and child's medical history, and the onset of the disorder.

There are three types of cerebral palsy: spastic, athetoid, and ataxic (Stephens 400). The most common type of CP is spastic. A child with spastic CP can't relax their muscles or their muscles may be stiff. Athetoid CP affects a child's ability to control the muscles of the body. This means that the arms and legs that are affected by athetoid CP may flutter and move suddenly. A child with ataxic CP has problems with balance and coordination.

A child with CP can have a mild case or severe case. It really depends on how much of the brain is affected and which parts of the body are controlled by that section of the brain. If both legs and arms are affected, a child might walk with in an unsteady way or have to wear braces or use crutches. If the part of the brain that controls speech is affected, children with CP might have trouble talking clearly. Other children might not be able to speak at all.

About 10 to 20 percent of children who have cerebral palsy acquire the disorder after birth, while many more cases are caused by an incident that occurs during pregnancy or birth. Acquired CP is the result of brain damage in the first few months or years of life (Bachrach 6). Common causes of brain damage are sicknesses such as bacterial meningitis, viral encephalitis, or even jaundice (Stephens 396). Another common cause is head injury from motor vehicle accidents, a fall, or child abuse. When a baby is born with cerebral palsy, the causes may be a due to avoidable or unavoidable incidents that occurred during pregnancy or birth.

Things that happened during pregnancy, which caused permanent damage to the unborn fetus, can also cause cerebral palsy. Certain bacterial and viral infections can damage the fetus during pregnancy. More commonly, untreated or maltreated maternal infections can induce premature labor and delivery. These newborns babies may suffer the consequences of brain damage from infections directly, or they may be damaged as a direct result of prematurity (Miller 3). Sometimes the mother can be unaware of the source of the infection if it goes undetected by her health care provider. Maternal infections such as rubella, cytomegalovirus, and toxoplasmosis can cross the placenta and infect the fetus as well, causing damage to the developing nervous system.

One of the most influential processes of prenatal care is the accurate dating of a pregnancy. Ultrasounds have made the estimation of due dates far more reliable. Failure to properly date the pregnancy may result in either premature delivery or post mature delivery, both of which may be responsible for brain damage to your newborn baby.

In Rh compatibility, the mother's body produces immune cells called antibodies that destroy the fetus's blood cells, leading to a form of jaundice in the newborn (UCP 2). Severe, untreated jaundice can damage brain cells, which in the end leads to cerebral palsy or some other type of neurological damage.

Cerebral palsy is diagnosed by a complete examination of your child's current health status. Doctors will test your child's motor skills and look carefully at his or her medical history. They will also look for slow development, abnormal muscle tone, and unusual posture. When diagnosing cerebral palsy, doctors must rule out other disorders that can cause abnormal movements. Cerebral palsy does not get worse, in other words, it is not progressive. Based on this fact, doctors must make the determination that your child's condition is not progressively getting worse. Doctors will also use a number of different specialized tests in diagnosing cerebral palsy. For example, the doctor may order a CT (computed tomography). This is an imaging of the brain that can determine underdeveloped areas of brain tissue. The doctor may also order an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging). This test also generates a picture of the brain to determine areas that may be damaged. In addition to these imaging tests, intelligence testing is also used. This helps to determine if a child is behind from a mental standpoint. In addition to diagnosing cerebral palsy through a complete and thorough examination of the child's abnormalities and behaviors, a review of the mother's pregnancy, labor and delivery and care received is also conducted.

Sometimes cerebral palsy is the result of a birth injury that causes the infant to be traumatized or deprived of oxygen. A number of things can cause trauma or asphyxia like the following:

* Difficult forceps delivery

* Difficult vacuum extraction delivery

* Exceptionally long labor

* Low amniotic fluid

* A twisted or compressed umbilical cord

* Macrosomia or a baby that is "large for gestational age"

* Placental abruption

* Hemorrhage

Most often when a baby is damaged, it is damaged late in labor