The Court Of Public Opinion

Spastic cerebral palsy is the most common form of cerebral palsy, accounting for between seventy and eighty percent of all cerebral palsy cases. People with this condition have stiff muscles that remain in a state of prolonged contraction. Such muscle stiffness and contraction makes normal movement difficult, and can lead to permanent muscle and joint damage over time.

While the muscles of the arms and legs are most severely affected in spastic cerebral palsy, the extent to which they are involved may vary. One type of spastic cerebral palsy is spastic diplegia. In this form, muscles in both legs are affected, resulting in the legs turning in and crossing at the knees. When a person with spastic diplegia tries to walk, the legs are stiff and cross at the knees, causing the characteristic scissors gait. In another type of spastic cerebral palsy called spastic hemiplegia, the limbs on one half of the body are affected. This type of cerebral palsy may be detected when a doctor tests an infant for hand preference. Before the age of one year, babies do not usually show hand preference. However, in spastic hemiplegia, an infant favors the hand that is on the unaffected side of the body.

The movement defects in spastic cerebral palsy are managed by combining physical therapy and surgery. Muscles and joints are exercised to prevent them from falling into disuse. A combination of disuse and abnormal posture may cause some muscles to permanently shorten, thereby worsening a patient?s range of movement and flexibility. Often, a substance that relaxes muscles, such as botulinum toxin or Botox, may be injected into a particular group of muscles in preparation for physical therapy or surgery. The spinal cord and nerves may also be operated upon to reduce the transmission of nerve impulses to certain muscles and thereby relax them. Orthopedic devices can help maintain limbs in their correct positions and improve movement.

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Athetoid cerebral palsy is one of three types of cerebral palsy, and affects between ten and twenty percent of patients. This form of cerebral palsy is caused by damage to parts of the brain called the cerebellum or basal ganglia. These parts of the brain help maintain coordinated and smooth movements and overall body posture. People with athetoid cerebral palsy demonstrate uncontrollable, involuntary, slow, writhing movements of the limbs, and sometimes of the face or tongue. These movements tend to become worse during periods of stress, and disappear during sleep.

Patients may be unable to walk or stand because of poor muscle tone, and may also have difficulty grasping and holding on to objects. Their inability to coordinate movements may also make them unable to feed themselves and perform other activities of daily living. When the face and tongue are involved, patients with athetoid cerebral palsy may grimace, drool or thrust their tongues out. Tongue involvement may make them unable to swallow properly or to speak normally, a condition called dysatrhria.

Patients with athetoid cerebral palsy can be prescribed a group of drugs called anticholinergics to reduce abnormal movements. Such drugs block the action of acetylcholine, a compound in the body that acts on nerve cells to trigger muscle contraction. Some commonly prescribed anticholinergic drugs are trihexyphenidyl, benztropine and procyclidine. Speech therapy plays an important role in managing athetoid cerebral palsy, and can help normalize swallowing movements and reduce slurred speech. Nowadays, special computers and voice synthesizers are available to make speech clearer.

Athetoid cerebral palsy does not improve or become worse with age, but it is distressing for the large number of people with normal intelligence who have this condition. However, normal mental ability often motivates patients to work harder to reduce movement and speech deficits through therapy and to lead productive lives.

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Ataxic cerebral palsy accounts for five to ten percent of all cases of cerebral palsy. In this form of cerebral palsy, there is damage to a part of the brain called the cerebellum that helps maintain balance and coordination. When the cerebellum is damaged, it can result in poor muscle tone or hypotonia, difficulty maintaining balance and a normal gait, tremors, disorders of depth perception and an inability to control the range and motion of voluntary movements. As a result, children with ataxic cerebral palsy often demonstrate a wide-based, unsteady gait. They may also have intention tremors that are tremors that occur while attempting voluntary movements. Voluntary movements are typically clumsy and difficult to perform; finer movements, such as writing, are most severely affected. Coarser movements such as reaching for objects may also be difficult due to altered depth perception. Rapid, involuntary side-to-side movements of the eyeballs, or nystagmus, may also be present. Children with ataxic cerebral palsy may also suffer from several other conditions, such as seizures, mental retardation, and visual and hearing defects.

Poor muscle tone, abnormal posture or movements and a delay in achieving the normal developmental milestones of infancy may raise the suspicion of ataxic cerebral palsy. A physician makes a diagnosis of cerebral palsy by combining a careful physical examination of the patient with findings from imaging methods, such as CT scans and MRIs. These findings are collectively used to determine whether the brain is developing normally or not.

Unfortunately, there is no cure for ataxic cerebral palsy. The disease can however be treated. There are people who think that ataxic cerebral palsy was caused because of a doctors error. In this case, it is definitely advisable to seek the counsel of an expert cerebral palsy lawyer. The lawyer must perform an investigation to gather all the information surrounding the ataxic cerebral palsy incident to first see if a strong case exists.

Ataxic cerebral palsy tends to become progressively worse as the patient ages. An experimental treatment called chronic cerebella stimulation places electrodes on the surface of the cerebellum. It is thought that stimulation of cerebella nerves through these electrodes may improve balance and muscle tone. However, results have been mixed so far. Again, if you are confused or have questions about causes and treatments of this disease, seek legal advice.

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