How Cerebral Palsy Affects Your Life!
Statistics say that nowadays, cerebral palsy affects 2 or 2.5 births from 1000 births. Even though it is not such a widely spread medical condition, specialists have become more and more concerned with cerebral palsy, especially due to the fact that it is a permanent condition with serious implications on the patient’s movement and speech abilities. What Is Cerebral Palsy? Cerebral palsy, also known as CP is the term that defines a wide range of neurological disorders that appear at birth or during the first years of childhood, mostly before reaching the age of 3. Sadly, this condition is a permanent one and it affects both the muscles and the communication skills. The most frequent symptoms regard the impossibility of coordinating the muscles and the involuntary movements, in addition to various abnormal reflexes. Even though it is permanent, cerebral palsy does not get worse with time.
Are There Different Types of Cerebral Palsy? There are three main cerebral palsy types and these are: spastic CP, ataxia and athetoid or dyskinetic. The first one of the cerebral palsy types presents three manifestation forms: spastic hemiplegia, spastic diplegia and spastic quadriplegia. The first case of spastic CP affects the left side of the brain, the second type affects mostly the half part of the body (in this case, patients often require wheelchairs) and spastic quadriplegia affects all four extremities equally. Ataxia patients often present balance problems and walking problems, in addition to suffering from various motor skills and difficulties in handling various items. Athetoid or dyskinetic CP patients have difficulties when trying to complete certain simple motion tasks and often suffer from involuntary motions. Which Are the Causes of Cerebral Palsy? Many neurological conditions have unidentified causes and cerebral palsy might be considered one of them. There are various speculations on this matter, but most specialists consider that the most common cause of cerebral palsy is brain damage. Brain damage can occur as a result of various actions and conditions, from brain infections like meningitis to accidents and abuse. How Can the Diagnosis Be Established? In order to establish the diagnosis for cerebral palsy, certain things are required. First of all, the patient must present the symptoms of the condition, the symptoms that clearly show a brain damage and the ones that clearly affect the motor functions and speech skills. Last, but not least, CP is identified by static symptomatology and computed tomography. In most cases, the parents observe their child’s incapacities in motion and communication, but the health care specialists can discover these symptoms even faster, within a month after birth. How Can Cerebral Palsy Be Treated? Even though there is not perfect treatment for cerebral palsy, since this is a permanent condition, there are a few medical options that have the role to improver the child’s speech and movement. The cerebral palsy therapy needs to be applied as soon as possible, in order to obtain the best results and to ameliorate the symptoms. Basically, the cerebral palsy therapy includes cerebral palsy speech treatment, physical treatment, drugs and even surgery in order to release the tension in the muscles. Besides these, the patients use motion equipment, such as wheelchairs and rolling walkers, as well as various communication equipment, such as voice synthesizers, which all have the role to ameliorate the symptoms and to improve the well being of the patients. |
