Cerebral Palsy Symptoms

According to 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 are attributed to non-progressive disturbances that occurred in the developing fetal or infant brain. Primarily these children have problem in muscle tone, gross & fine motor activity, balance & posture. It is Often accompanied with problem in sensation, perception, cognition, communication, behavior, speech & seizures. Mental retardation can be found in 30-40% children with severe disability. 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 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.

Afterwards 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 sever disability even complete bed ridden.Cerebral palsy problem can affect one part of extremity to the whole body depending upon extent of brain lesion. These children can also have different movement disorders depending upon site of brain lesion. Spastic children have spasticity & fix tone pattern. Dyskinetic cerebral paly has variable tone pattern.