Paralysis Resource Guide - (Page 14) CONDITIONS CEREBRAL PALSY Cerebral palsy (CP) refers to a group of conditions that affect control of movement and posture. CP disorders are not caused by problems in the muscles or nerves. Instead, faulty development or damage to areas in the brain cause inadequate control of movement and posture. Symptoms range from mild to severe, including forms of paralysis. Cerebral palsy does not always cause profound disability. While a child with severe CP might be unable to walk and need extensive care, a child with mild cerebral palsy might only be slightly off-balance and require no special assistance. Cerebral palsy is not contagious nor is it usually inherited. With treatment, most children significantly improve their abilities. While symptoms may change over time, cerebral palsy by definition is not progressive; if impairment does increase, it’s usually something other than CP. Children with cerebral palsy often require treatment for mental retardation, learning disabilities, seizures, plus vision, hearing and speech difficulties. Cerebral palsy usually is not diagnosed until a child is about two to three years old; it affects about 2 to 3 children out of 1,000 over the age of three and about 500,000 children and adults in the United States have CP. There are three major types: 1. Spastic cerebral palsy: About 70–80 percent of those affected have spastic cerebral palsy, in which muscles are stiff, making movement difficult. When both legs are affected (spastic diplegia), a child may have difficulty walking because tight muscles in the hips and legs cause the legs to turn inward and scissor at the knees. In other cases, only one side of the body is affected (spastic hemiplegia), often with the arm more severely affected than the leg. Most severe is spastic quadriplegia, in which all four limbs and the trunk are affected, often along with the muscles of the mouth and tongue. 2. Dyskinetic (athetoid) cerebral palsy: About 10–20 percent have the dyskinetic form, which affects the entire body. It is characterized by fluctuations in muscle tone from too tight to too loose) and sometimes is associated with uncontrolled movements (which can be slow and writhing or rapid and jerky). Children often have trouble learning to control their bodies well enough to 14
For optimal viewing of this digital publication, please enable JavaScript and then refresh the page. If you would like to try to load the digital publication without using Flash Player detection, please click here.