Causes Of Cerebral Palsy

The most simple answer as to why a child is suffering from cerebral palsy is because they have suffered some form of damage to their brain. Normally such damage will have occurred before, during or after the child has been born. But in order to find out which kind of injury to the brain and the causes of cerebral palsy a doctor will need to carry out various medical and neurological tests on the child.

Unfortunately when medical professionals are investigating why the child has suffered a brain injury find it difficult to know what for sure had caused it. Because they are unable to discover what has caused the initial injury to the child’s brain they also find it difficult to have ways of preventing it in the first place. But in many cases where a child is suffering from cerebral palsy there are two injuries to their brain which can be the cause of them suffering from this particular condition.

The first is because the child’s brain has been unable to develop properly and is commonly referred to as developmental brain malformation. Unfortunately with this kind of injury to the brain there is very little chance available medically to help prevent such an injury occurring.

The other cause for a child to suffer brain damage whilst still in their mother’s womb or as they are being born or after they have been born is through a recognized injury. The kinds of injuries that fall in to this category are infections (such as meningitis), blood has been allowed to bleed into the brain or the child has not been provided with sufficient amounts of oxygen to their brain. Around 10 to 15% of all children who suffer from cerebral palsy will have been caused by such injuries.

Also a large proportion of the cases of cerebral palsy to be found in young children today have been caused through medical mistakes and could therefore have been easily prevented. Often a large number of children who have cerebral palsy will have suffered from some kind of brain damage when they were being delivered and therefore could easily have been prevented.

But just how bad a child’s cerebral palsy is will depend on how severe the damage to their brain was. For a baby who is born prematurely and suffers from an intraventricular haemorrhage (bleeding into the brain) will suffer from very extensive brain damage.

Above we have explained some of the causes of cerebral palsy in children today and on average around 6,000 new cases are presenting themselves in the USA each year. Currently the medical bill to cover the costs of caring for such children in the USA alone is running at around $20 billion a year. But the biggest question being asked by many parents today whose child suffers from cerebral palsy was if it could have been prevented or not?