Cerebral Palsy Causes 2
As skills sometimes affected by cerebral palsy are usually absent at birth, it is usually impossible to diagnose the disease before the child is missing key stages of development, such as the ability to crawl or grasp objects. However, observation of newborns can help detect those who are at particular risk of cerebral palsy.
Some risk factors:
* A severe jaundice at birth or shortly after – although many babies have jaundice are yellow and light at birth (a sign of destruction of red blood cells), severe jaundice can be a sign of incompatibility and Rhesus factor risk of cerebral palsy;
* The size of the abnormally small head or lower jaw;
* An inguinal hernia;
* A malformation of the spine;
* Seizures;
* Reduced rates of thyroxine, a thyroid hormone;
* An index Apgar enough – this is a review conducted several times during the hours following birth and establish a result in terms of heart rate, reflexes, the color of skin and muscle tone .
The presence of one or more of these risk factors in the mother or child does not necessarily mean that the child will suffer later from cerebral palsy, but doctors are based on this criterion to decide whether to follow closely a particular child.
The brain of the fetus may suffer many injuries causing cerebral palsy, but many of them seem to involve blood problems. Rh incompatibility is one example. Even in the fetus, there is a destruction of red blood cells at birth, when fetal hemoglobin begins to disappear in favor of adult hemoglobin (fetal hemoglobin may be considered the equivalent of blood teeth). The destroyed cells release the bilirubin, the yellow pigment causing jaundice if present in concentrations too high. However, in infants, an excess of bilirubin can cause brain damage.
Childbirth is also a stage where the risk of stroke is high in the newborn. The type of stroke whose newborns are sometimes victims is not the classic stroke, during which a blood clot blocks blood circulation to the brain, but rather type of bleeding, more rare, where a vessel produces a burst blood shedding blood in the brain. It appears that these strokes are caused by the constraints of confinement.
Among newborns of normal weight born at term, those who develop cerebral palsy often have concentrations of various coagulation factors abnormally high in the blood. It may be that these children suffer from ischemic strokes, in which the obstruction prevents the blood carrying oxygen from reaching the brain tissue. The research focuses on this issue.
All these complications occur late in pregnancy, but it seems that the majority of development issues at the root of cerebral palsy occur at an earlier stage of fetal development.
In a case of cerebral palsy in six, the child is born in good neurological health but suffered when he was a baby, injuries as a result of an accident or infection. The main causes of cerebral palsy after birth include meningitis and brain injuries as a result of falls or traffic accidents.
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