Cereberal Palsy

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a group of syndromes that causes nonprogressive impaired voluntary movement or posture or involuntary movements and resulting from prenatal developmental malformations or peri-natal or postnatal CNS damage. it is not a specific disorder

Symptoms and Signs

• lagging motor development (persistent infantile  patterns,  and altered muscle tone.

Depending on which parts of the CNS are malformed or damaged:

• Spastic syndromes. Spasticity is a state of resistance to passive range of motion; resistance increases with increasing speed of that motion, These syndromes may cause hemiplegia, quadriplegia, diplegia, or paraplegia. A scissors gait and toe walking are typical.
• Athetoid or dyskinetic – slow, writhing, involuntary movements of the extremities and trunk often activated by attempts at voluntary movement or by excitement. Abrupt, jerky, distal movements may also occur. Movements increase with emotional tension and disappear during sleep. Difficulty in speech or even impaired speech  occurs and is often severe.
• Ataxic syndromes. Weakness, in coordination, and intention tremor cause unsteadiness  and difficulty with rapid or fine movements.
• Mixed syndromes are common—most often, with spasticity and stream of slow writhing movements, of the hands and feet.

Diagnosis

Cranial MRI

Ayurveda and Cerebral Palsy

Ayurveda describes this condition as phakka (inability to walk or move).this condition occur in children and are mainly due to injury during birth along with different diseases affecting childhood.

According to ayurveda the condition can be managed with medicines and external therapies in an effective manner, but it’s also mentioned as a difficult condition with continuous medication and regular treatment to achieve goal

According to ayurveda vata dosha is the one which controls the sensory and motor activity ,effective treatment modalities to control vata dosha are mentioned by ancient scholars.

There are different head treatment modalities with external body treatments along with internal medicines mainly ghee preparations which are having the capacity to pierce the blood brain barrier and nourish the neurons.

In our hospital we had children with this condition and in most of the spastic cerebral palsy cases we got good results.