Predicting what a young child with Cerebral
Palsy will be like or what he will or will not do i.e. their
prognosis, is very difficult. Any predictions for an infant under
six months of age are little better than guesses, and even for
children younger than one year it is often very difficult to
predict the pattern of involvement.
By the time the child is two years old, however,
the physician can determine whether the child has hemiplegia, diplegia,
or quadriplegia. Based on this involvement pattern, some predictions
can be made. It is worth saying again that children with cerebral
palsy do not stop doing activities once they have begun to do them.
Such a loss of skills, called regression, is not characteristic
of cerebral palsy.
If regression occurs, it is necessary to look
for a different cause of the child's problems. In order for a child
to be able to walk, some major events in motor control have to
occur. A child must be able to hold up his head before he can sit
up on his own, and he must be able to sit independently before
he can walk on his own. It is generally assumed that if a child
is not sitting up by himself by age 4 or walking by age 8, he will
never be an independent walker. But a child who starts to walk
at age 3 will certainly continue to walk and will be walking when
he is 13 years old unless he has a disorder other than CP.
It is even more difficult to make early predictions
of speaking ability or mental ability than it is to predict motor
function. Here, too, evaluation is much more reliable after age
2, although a motor disability can make the evaluation of intellectual
function quite difficult. Sometimes "motor-free" tests
which can assess intellectual ability without, the person being
tested, needing to use his hands are administered by psychologists
who have expertise in their use.
Overall, the intellectual ability of the person,
far more than their physical disability, will determine the person's
prognosis. In other words, mental retardation is far more likely
than cerebral palsy to impair a child's ability to function.
In dealing with Cerebral
Palsy, it is important to understand the available Cerebral
Palsy Treatments that go along with a Cerebral
Palsy Diagnosis after Cerebral
Palsy has been detected. Through extensive, technology based Cerebral
Palsy Research, there is hope for possible future Cerebral
Palsy Prevention.
If your child has any type of Cerebral
Palsy such as Athetoid
Cerebral Palsy, Spastic
Cerebral Palsy, or Ataxic
Cerebral Palsy, feel comfort in knowing you have made a step
in the right direction by contacting us.
