Baby F, 10 months old. With round eyes and a rosy, full face, she is a beautiful little girl. Although she cannot sit yet, her legs are very strong and she stands straight and often fights with her little fists. One day when her mother went to the city, she took her to the doctor, but the doctor diagnosed her with “pediatric cerebral palsy”, which surprised her. What is pediatric cerebral palsy? Pediatric cerebral palsy is a syndrome of motor developmental disorders and postural abnormalities, often accompanied by mental retardation, epilepsy, and speech disorders, due to an embryonic defect or some factor that damages immature brain tissue from pregnancy to early infancy. There are 550,000 children with cerebral palsy in the United States, 1.5 per 1,000 in Japan, and 1.8 to 6 per 1,000 reported in China. Motor impairment refers to: motor ability is lower than that of children of the same age. In mild cases, the movement of hands and feet is slightly inflexible, while in severe cases, it is difficult to hold the head up and cannot sit, crawl or walk. Abnormal posture refers to: twisted posture, asymmetry on both sides, inward thumb, internal rotation and abduction of upper limbs, inward and crossed lower limbs, etc. High-risk factors for cerebral palsy The direct causes of cerebral palsy are brain injury and brain developmental defects. Common high-risk factors for cerebral palsy include: diabetes, infection, past history of stillbirth or stillbirth in the mother during pregnancy; intrauterine distress, abnormal amniotic fluid, abnormal umbilical cord placenta; premature birth, hyperbilirubinemia, intracranial hemorrhage, and hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy. It has become an accepted fact that perinatal high-risk factors are prone to cause various types of brain injury and leave various degrees of neurological sequelae. With the development of perinatal and neonatal medicine, the success rate of rescue of high-risk infants has been greatly improved, and the long-term prognostic problems have become more prominent, and the proportion of developmental abnormalities in high-risk infants is much higher than that of the general population. According to a domestic survey, the prevalence of cerebral palsy in preterm infants is 20.43 times higher than that in term infants; overseas reports indicate that the likelihood of cerebral palsy in preterm infants due to prenatal and intrapartum brain injury is 8 times higher than that in term infants, and the likelihood of cerebral palsy in preterm infants with gestational age less than 32 weeks is 30 times higher than that in term infants. Early abnormal manifestations There are several important indicators for parents: at 3 months of age, the eyes cannot follow people and objects, the fingers make a fist and do not open; at 3 to 4 months of age, the head still cannot be lifted; at 6 to 7 months of age, the legs are straight or crossed when in a dragging position; at 8 months of age, the child still cannot sit; at 10 months of age, the child cannot pinch things with the fingers; at 10 months of age, the hands still cannot be put together; when reaching things, it is always one hand. It is recommended that children with high-risk factors establish contact with hospitals that have the means to monitor their development frequently after birth, receive timely guidance, and implement early intervention. Early intervention is good Early intervention is: an organized and purposeful educational activity that begins in the neonatal period and covers motor, cognitive skills, and language development for children before the age of 5-6 years whose neurological and mental development deviates or is likely to deviate from normal. With early interventions, it is expected that these children will improve their abilities or catch up to normal developmental levels. The emphasis on early is due to the high plasticity of the immature brain. The critical period for whole brain development is from the beginning of gestation to 3 years of age after birth, and for neurons is from 10 to 26 weeks of gestation to 6 months after birth. Although neuronal cells cannot be regenerated after death, the specific functions of certain cells can be changed in the early stages of brain. Some neuronal cells can replace the functions of neighboring damaged cells, and new neural axons and dendrites can be generated to restore neural excitation transmission pathways. The younger the age, the stronger the reconstructive ability, especially within the first six months after birth, the strongest plasticity and the best rehabilitation effect, which can achieve twice the result with half the effort.