How to treat childhood cerebral palsy?

  Childhood cerebral palsy, or cerebral palsy for short, is a syndrome caused by various kinds of damage to the immature brain before birth, at birth, or during the first month after birth, with motor and postural disorders as the main manifestations, and often accompanied by epilepsy, mental retardation, and speech disorders. After the control of poliomyelitis, cerebral palsy has become the main disease causing motor disability in children. According to its clinical manifestations, there are three types of cerebral palsy: 1. Spastic type (about 60%). The main manifestations are stiffness of limb muscles, clumsy and uncoordinated movements; when standing, the feet droop, turn inward, land on the toes, and the heels cannot step flat. When walking, the child has a tiptoe and scissor-like gait. The spasticity is often aggravated when the child exerts himself or herself or becomes agitated, and is relieved when he or she sleeps quietly. Due to joint spasm, voluntary movement is very difficult. In severe cases, tendon contracture and joint deformity may occur.  2, hand and foot tachycardia type (about 25%): children at rest often appear slow, writhing-like, irregular, can not be self-control, purposeless, uncoordinated movements. Usually involves the whole body, poor head control, often with strange facial expressions, sometimes repeated rhythmic tongue extension and retraction movements, involuntary movements of the trunk and upper limbs are more prominent, and abnormal movements disappear after sleep.  3.Other types (15%): including ataxia, tonicity, tremor, hypotonia and mixed type.  To date, there is no absolutely effective cure for cerebral palsy. Symptoms of cerebral palsy can be effectively controlled by the following methods: 1. Medication: oral drugs to relieve muscle spasm (baclofen, benzodiazepines, etc.) to temporarily control muscle spasm; oral anti-epileptic drugs to control seizures. There is no effective drug treatment for brain damage in cerebral palsy patients.  2. Rehabilitation training: (1) Simple rehabilitation training: for spastic cerebral palsy with muscle tone below grade 3 to improve patients’ limb movement ability; (2) Post-operative rehabilitation training: as an adjuvant treatment after surgery.  3.Surgical treatment: spastic cerebral palsy with muscle tone ≥ grade 3 and mixed type of cerebral palsy with spasticity as the main cause require surgical treatment. (1) Functional selective posterior spinal nerve root amputation (for spastic cerebral palsy and spastic-based mixed cerebral palsy with muscle tone ≥ grade 3, no obvious tendon contracture and bone and joint deformity, and basically normal intelligence); (2) muscle and tendon release and bone and joint orthopedic surgery (for spastic cerebral palsy with muscle tone ≥ grade 3, with tendon contracture and bone and joint deformity and basically normal intelligence), etc. (2) muscle tendon release and orthopedic bone and joint surgery (for spastic cerebral palsy with spasticity and normal intelligence).