Cerebral Palsy Symptoms

Symptoms Of Cerebral Palsy

Symptoms of cerebral palsy in children are dribbling of saliva, problem in sucking, no social smile on looking to mother, abnormal sensation and tone in body of baby, a delayed milestone like absent neck holding, creeping crawling, knee walk, less use of hands, epilepsy presence of primitive reflexes, growth retardation, microcephaly, etc

Types Of Cerebral Palsy

A cerebral palsy is a group of neuromotor disorders. It occurs because of brain insult at the early age of life. It can present in a variety of manner like spastic cerebral palsy, athetoid cerebral palsy, ataxic cerebral palsy, mixed cerebral palsy, hypotonic, etc.

In spastic cerebral palsy tone in the body is high during all activities but in dyskinetic cerebral palsy tone is fluctuating and completely normal during rest and in sleep.

Ataxic cerebral palsy presents as a balance issue in cerebral palsy. Dystonic and ataxic cerebral palsy usually affects the whole body but spastic cerebral palsy presents as hemiplegic, diplegic, triplegic, and quadriplegic spastic cerebral palsy.

Treatment For Cerebral Palsy

According to the latest cerebral palsy definition (Modified after Bax et al. 2005), it is a group of permanent disorders of the development of movement and posture, causing activity limitation, that is attributed to non-progressive disturbances that occurred in the developing fetal or infant brain.

Primarily these children have problems in muscle tone, gross & fine motor activity, balance & posture. It is often accompanied by problems in sensation, perception, cognition, communication, behavior, speech & seizures. Mental retardation can be found in 30-40% of children with severe disabilities.

Cerebral palsy symptoms vary and depend upon the part of the brain involved, age of diagnosis, severity, and treatment received so far. Cerebral palsy can be diagnosed at a very early age even up to 6 months of age by recognition of delay in developmental milestones, abnormal muscle tone, absent neck holding, poor social smile, problem in sucking & deglutition, history of high-risk delivery, etc.

Afterward many cerebral palsy symptoms like difficulty in crawling, standing, walking, speech, vision, hearing, behavior problems, drooling, recurrent illness, nutrition problems, seizure, presence of abnormal movement in the body can present.

Severity can vary from trivial problem to severe disability even complete bedridden. The cerebral palsy problem can affect one part of the extremity to the whole body depending upon the extent of the brain lesion.

These children can also have different movement disorders depending upon the site of the brain lesion. Spastic children have spasticity & fix tone patterns. Dyskinetic cerebral paly has a variable tone pattern.

Check More About Cerebral Palsy its Causes, Symptoms & Treatment – Check Video

Important Facts About Cerebral Palsy

16 Cerebral Palsy Myths
Cerebral palsy Care Plan
Cerebral Palsy Prognosis
Cerebral Palsy Birth Injuries
Cerebral Palsy Sleeping Disorder
Living With Cerebral Palsy Disorder
Cerebral Palsy Associated Disorders
Cerebral Palsy Eating and Feeding Tips

It is good to have some knowledge of the cerebral palsy condition and also important to know about the symptoms of cerebral palsy. Knowing the cerebral palsy symptoms and signs can ensure immediate therapy for cerebral palsy children. There are some essential things that you need to aware about the symptoms of cerebral palsy. Your awareness about CP will help in proper cerebral palsy diagnosis.

• Symptoms of CP condition are not the same for each and every child. There are four major types of cerebral palsy. A child’s symptoms will define which type of cerebral palsy child have. Spastic cerebral palsy, ataxic, athetotic cerebral palsy and mixed cerebral palsy has. Spastic cerebral palsy is further categorized into different categories like spastic hemiplegia, spastic monoplegia, spastic diplegia, and spastic quadriplegia. These categories of cerebral palsy depending on the limbs affected.
•  Some of the cerebral palsy cases have mixed symptoms of all three types. Cerebral palsy symptoms include stiffness in muscles, floppy in muscles, tremors, asymmetrical gait, foot-dragging, drooling, scissors gait, hearing problem, sight impairment and have difficulty in swallowing.
• Some children with the cerebral palsy condition may also suffer from mental retardation problems. This is not seen always in the CP case. In fact, many cerebral palsy children have mental abilities that are normal for their age.
• Cerebral palsy symptoms do not have a set frame time to appear on the child. Some of the case it may show first few days and weeks after birth. In milder conditions, it may appear after one or more years.
• It can make difficulties in movement. But different cerebral palsy therapy techniques and advanced medical procedures can help children get more potential with better improvement in movement. Most of the time these treatments are miracles for CP patients to become self-independent and enjoy life with more joy.
• Cerebral palsy therapy mostly inspired by physiotherapy treatment or special exercises. Some of therapies patient can perform it easily on their home.