The primary objective is to minimize disability, which means above all to prevent muscle contractures or remedy. They are less likely to occur if you exercise the affected limb as much as possible. Physiotherapy aims to prevent contractures and poor growth due to atrophy. Although there is not enough studies demonstrating the effectiveness of physiotherapy, most doctors agree that the exercise affected members is clearly the best way to preserve their health and to draw as much as possible. If contractures, it is generally necessary to resort to surgery. It can take several months for the muscle to recover from such an operation. It is therefore much better to prevent than cure. Sometimes administered injections of Botulinum Toxin against contractures serious. The toxin paralyzes the muscle, allowing it to relax.

When school age approach, the treatment focuses on improving communication and reducing the symptoms that constitute a problem in social terms, as was done drooling. No effort is spared to put the children of normal intelligence in schools. Parents are responsible for much of the therapy once they have learned the techniques.

Convulsions and spasticity can often be controlled by an anticonvulsant drug or a muscle relaxant (muscle relaxant), and most children with cerebral palsy after drug treatment in one form or another. When the symptoms can not be eliminated, their effects can be minimized by using modern devices such as computerized prostheses that help to speak and electric wheelchairs.

Although the total elimination of cerebral palsy is probably impossible, many measures enable women to avoid this type of congenital malformations. Any factor that increases the risk of premature delivery, such as tobacco, alcohol and illicit drugs increases the risk of cerebral palsy. Birth defects are the more likely that the mother smokes or drinks during pregnancy.

Vaccination against rubella is one of the easiest to take a woman. As this vaccine can not be administered during pregnancy, any woman who intends to have a child should be vaccinated immediately.

Any measure reducing the risk of head injury in a baby or an infant also reduces the risk of cerebral palsy. In this regard, the most important step that parents can take is to install the car seat for their child. On the other hand, it is not always possible to prevent meningitis, but we can reduce the risk by taking the child to the doctor every time he is suffering from an ear infection or a bad headache accompanied by fever. Any child under the age of 4 to 6 months has a fever should be seen by a doctor.

Babies have special reflexes that they lose after a few months, but these reflexes persist longer in children with cerebral palsy. Several tests to assess these reflexes. For example, the Moro reflex pushes the baby to move both arms when lying on his back and that raises his legs above his head. If a baby keeps this reaction well beyond six months is a sign of developmental delay that may evoke cerebral palsy.

Sometimes, medical imaging techniques like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and computed tomography (CT) may show an abscess or other physical brain damage. We must exclude the possibility of a progressive neurological disease. There are also intelligence tests and eye exams and hearing to determine if cerebral palsy is accompanied by other problems.

* A failure to thrive, the child not reaching milestones such as the ability to sit, smile or walk;
* Unusual positions, excessive rigidity or lack of exaggerated tone, continuous bending of the joints;
* Seizures;
* A muscle wasting, slow growth or asymmetric;
* A convergent squint (child ladle);
* A sense of drowsiness or apparent deafness.

There is no set profile of symptoms in cerebral palsy, because it is a broad term that encompasses many symptoms. However, there are some broad categories that distinguish the various motor symptoms (muscle).

The spastic form category is the most common symptom, affecting about three quarters of people with cerebral palsy. The muscles tend to be contracted, which may be serious enough for the joint remains bent permanently or to cause paralysis. The spasticity may affect both legs, both arms, the four members, or one leg and one arm. In addition, growth in affected members may be slower than that of healthy members, with the result of the feet, legs and abnormally small hands. For those affected, but able to walk, often have a scissors in which, at every step, knees almost touching, and the feet cross inwards beyond an imaginary line through the middle of body.

The form athetosis affects one in ten people with cerebral palsy. It is characterized by slow movements, such as convulsions, usually in the limbs, but may also affect facial muscles including the tongue. This form may cause the patient to drool, produce at home facial expressions and unusual ability to pronounce certain words or sounds. One must distinguish speech disorders due to muscle damage (dysarthria) and those caused by mental retardation, an entirely different matter.

The ataxic form is the form of cerebral palsy the less common and affects less than one in ten. In case of ataxia, poor coordination and poor depth perception makes unsteady gait with a broader base of sustenance. Ataxia also makes it difficult for the execution of rapid movements and fine, like writing. People may suffer from intention tremor: tremor that affects the arm or hand during a voluntary movement to grasp an object and empire as the main approach of the object.

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.

Although cerebral palsy syndrome is often congenital (present at birth), it is not hereditary. Rather, it is an error that occurs during development of the fetus or a problem during childbirth itself. Formerly, it was believed that the main cause was a lack of oxygen during birth, but today researchers think that it is true that in 10% of cases.

The fetus from a single cell, which divides repeatedly, ultimately producing billions of cells. At various stages, some of these cells specialize. We are witnessing the formation of various types of nerve cells that migrate to occupy their rightful place in the brain. This process is extremely complicated, and it is not surprising that, on occasion, some errors disrupt the formation of the brain. We are just beginning to understand normal brain development in the fetus, and we hope that this progress will allow us one day to discover the origin of various types of cerebral palsy.

Close monitoring of mothers and their children over the years has allowed researchers to identify some factors that increase the likelihood of developing cerebral palsy, including:

* A premature birth or low birth weight – the most important risk factor;
* Have multiple births, which can multiply the risk of cerebral palsy;
* A presentation by the headquarters;
* Any difficulty or complication during pregnancy;
* The maternal bleeding or proteinuria (excess protein in urine) after 6 months of pregnancy;
* The maternal hyperthyroidism;
* The retardation of the mother;
* Epilepsy in the mother;
* An infection in the mother during pregnancy. Rubella is probably the main infectious cause of cerebral palsy. Toxoplasmosis is another infection potentially threatening brain development of the fetus;
* Rh incompatibility, an immune problem in which the mother produces antibodies that attack and destroy fetal red blood cells, disrupting the supply of oxygen to the organs of the child. This phenomenon is rare during a first pregnancy.

In general, cerebral palsy affects a newborn on 500 and a newborn in 1 000, some of them are however only slightly disabled. It is the premature and newborn babies whose weight is insufficient are most at risk, the risk is 100 times higher in infants whose birth weight is less than 1.6 kilograms (3.5 pounds) that in babies whose weight is normal. In recent years, the number of new cases of cerebral palsy has actually increased slightly, mainly because of improved intensive care allows survival of more premature babies, but also because the salaries of the infertility resulting in an increase in multiple pregnancies during which the probability of giving birth to a baby with cerebral palsy is higher.