What to do about pediatric cerebral palsy

  Cerebral palsy is the most common neurological injury in pediatric patients. It is a non-progressive brain injury caused by various reasons from before birth to within one month after birth, mainly manifesting as central motor disorders and postural abnormalities, and often accompanied by other complications such as mental retardation, language disorders, epilepsy, etc. According to the World Health Organization, the prevalence of cerebral palsy in children worldwide is 1.5‰ to 5‰, and the prevalence in developed countries is 2‰ to 3‰, while in China the prevalence of cerebral palsy in children is 1.8‰ to 4‰.  With the further development of neonatal medicine and perinatal medicine research, the mortality rate of Chinese newborns has decreased significantly, however, cerebral palsy, as one of the major diseases causing childhood disability, has shown an increasing trend. There are 4-5 million children with cerebral palsy in China, and based on 20 million newborns per year, there are about 36,000 to 80,000 new children with cerebral palsy in China every year, which is a very large number. These alarming numbers have made more and more people aware of the need to pay attention to children with cerebral palsy.  The causes of cerebral palsy are diverse and complex, including prematurity and low birth weight, asphyxia and hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy, severe maternal placental jaundice, maternal flu and inflammation during pregnancy, and internal bleeding, with prematurity and low birth weight being the primary risk factors.  According to the 2006 National Pediatric Cerebral Palsy Rehabilitation Conference, cerebral palsy includes the following diagnostic criteria: the brain injury causing cerebral palsy is non-progressive; the lesion causing the movement disorder is in the brain; the symptoms appear in infancy; sometimes combined with mental retardation, epilepsy, perceptual disorders and other abnormalities; except for central movement disorders caused by progressive diseases and temporary movement in normal children. Developmental delays.  The clinical manifestations can be divided into the following categories: 1. spastic type mainly manifests as motor development lags behind that of children of the same age, with increased muscle tone. 2.  2. The involuntary movement type is characterized by involuntary and unconscious movements, which can be characterized by tardive movements, dance-like movements, tremor, etc.  The symptoms of tonic type are similar to those of spastic type, but the degree is more severe, characterized by increased muscle tone, tonicity, limb stiffness, and severe movement disorders, often accompanied by coracoacusis.  4.Ataxia is characterized by cerebellar damage, hypotonia, balance disorder, but no main movement.  The hypotonia type is usually the early transition of the healed clonic type or involuntary movement type of cerebral palsy, with hypotonia as the significant symptom feature. 6.  Treatment In recent years, scholars from various countries have shown that if early diagnosis and early treatment are made, clinical cure or normalization can be achieved except for the very severe cases. Because the brain tissue is not fully developed in early infancy (0-6 months), and the brain injury is in the primary stage, abnormal posture and abnormal reflexes are not yet fixed, timely treatment in this period can get the best treatment effect. At present, the main surgical procedures for cerebral palsy treatment include selective posterior spinal nerve root partial excision, selective peripheral nerve partial excision, orthopedic surgery of bone and muscle tendons, and stereotactic cerebral pallidum destruction.  Because parents of children with cerebral palsy lack knowledge in this area, although they discover certain abnormalities in their children, they fail to pay enough attention to them out of luck or because of subconscious rejection of the disease, or even mistake them for calcium deficiency, resulting in children with cerebral palsy missing the time for early diagnosis and early treatment. Although cerebral palsy cannot be completely cured, some rehabilitation and orthopedic surgical means can be used to alleviate the consequences caused by the causative factors, make the best efforts to improve the function, reduce the disability, improve the motor ability, language ability and self-care ability, and strive to achieve the ability to receive education and live a self-care life.