Misconceptions about children with cerebral palsy

  The rehabilitation work for children with cerebral palsy has been carried out in China for nearly 30 years, and a more complete treatment method has been gradually developed. However, some parents still have many misconceptions about cerebral palsy, which may delay the best rehabilitation period of the child and affect the rehabilitation effect of the child to a great extent.  The best time for treatment is delayed due to early detection.  When some parents find that their children have unexplained crying, poor feeding, too quiet, frightened, etc. before the age of half a year, they simply think that the child is young, weak, or lack of calcium, and do not go to the hospital; when parents of children born prematurely see that the development of movement such as turning, lying down, sitting, standing, walking, etc. is behind other normal children of the same age, they often simply think that it is caused by premature birth, thinking that it will recover slowly with the natural growth and development. Parents often take a wait-and-see, wait attitude when they find that their children have abnormal postures in sports, thinking that there is a problem with the bones and muscles.  Once cerebral palsy is diagnosed, parents are often the first to blindly seek medical help, believing in “prescriptions” that can work in one dose. In fact, cerebral palsy is a late developmental disorder after brain injury, and only through post-operative rehabilitation training and surgery if necessary can some of the symptoms of the child be improved.  When the doctor tells the parents that the child has muscle or tendon spasms, contractures or skeletal deformities and recommends surgery, the parents put all their hopes on the surgery and neglect the post-operative rehabilitation training, resulting in poor functional improvement or relapse of the child. Because of the damage to the brain tissue of the child, the rehabilitation of children with cerebral palsy should continue throughout their lives. No matter which means of treatment is used, it is an integral part of comprehensive rehabilitation. Therefore, both parents and health care providers should develop the concept of comprehensive rehabilitation.  Parents should have a correct understanding of the surgical treatment of cerebral palsy: the surgical treatment is a preparation for the rehabilitation training, and the spasticity of the limb is released and the muscle tone is reduced through the surgery, which creates good conditions for the rehabilitation training. However, surgery is only part of the systematic treatment of cerebral palsy, and rehabilitation training after surgery is an important guarantee to improve the efficacy of surgery. One must not think that surgery can solve all problems and neglect post-operative rehabilitation training; on the contrary, if surgery is not performed, the effect of pure rehabilitation training will be limited (e.g., recurrence after rehabilitation training, deformities that cannot be solved). Therefore, it is best to be able to go to a more formal hospital for rehabilitation training after surgery. Patients whose spasticity has been released after surgery must pay attention to strengthening muscle strength. In addition, posture correction, body coordination and balance recovery all require a certain amount of time for rehabilitation training, and postoperative training should be carried out according to the patient’s growth and development pattern to ensure that the patient can have a better recovery after surgery.