Cerebral Palsy
Cerebral Palsy During Childhood
Cerebral palsy is the most common childhood physical disability.
Yet, the condition is still challenging for most of us to understand. It’s a common misconception that all cerebral palsy cases are the same. In reality, each child’s symptoms and treatment options can look very different.
The causes of cerebral palsy can be even more difficult to grasp. Cerebral palsy sometimes occurs from nonpreventable factors such as premature birth or genetic brain malformations. But in other cases, medical errors and negligence during delivery play a key role in causing brain damage at birth.
Medical professionals sometimes make errors during the birthing process that deprive the baby’s brain of sufficient oxygen and blood flow. When this happens, it can kill off brain cells and impair the baby’s neural pathways responsible for controlling muscle movement.
Even simple mistakes like delaying an emergency C-section or missing signs of fetal distress can lead to irreversible brain injuries. These seemingly small mistakes can forever alter the child’s life.
Children with cerebral palsy often require early intervention treatments, medications, surgeries, and therapies to realize their full potential. In many cases, this lifelong care can cost millions of dollars.
Families should not have to face this financial and emotional strain when their child’s conditions were entirely avoidable. When a child’s injuries stem from careless mistakes at birth, a family can recover funds through a medical malpractice lawsuit. These funds can cover the cost of medical treatments, therapies, adaptive equipment, and more life-saving medical care.
A specialized cerebral palsy attorney can prove when a medical provider’s negligence directly caused a child’s brain injury. If you have questions or concerns about the events of your child’s birth, seeking legal advice is critical. One call can open the path to fair compensation and better support for your child and their conditions.
Cerebral Palsy Malpractice Attorneys
Our top rated cerebral palsy attorneys specialize in birth injury medical malpractice. We understand how medical mistakes during delivery can cause brain injuries that permanently impact a child’s life.
If your baby’s preventable birth injuries led to a cerebral palsy diagnosis, don’t hesitate to contact our firm. We can answer difficult legal and medical questions and investigate the facts on your behalf.
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Cerebral Palsy Lawyers
(888) 987-0005Our Cerebral Palsy Lawyers are available to meet you in your home or the hospital.
Our vast network of medical experts and in-house nursing staff and nurse-attorneys gives us the edge over our competition. When we take your case, we assign you with not just an attorney but an entire medical team. This team includes attorneys, experienced nursing advocates, and seasoned medical experts.
We understand the extensive care your child requires to assist with their cerebral palsy symptoms. Your team is available to assist with any day-to-day treatment you or your child may need. This includes assistance with obtaining medical records, scheduling doctors’ appointments, providing transportation, and any other problems that may arise.
We offer all of this on a contingency fee basis. This means you will not pay any fees until after we win your case and secure a settlement. We have an unmatched track record of birth injury results that sets us apart from other birth injury law firms.
Recent Birth Injury Settlement:
Birth Injury settlement against a hospital in which nurses and physicians failed to detect a uterine rupture during delivery causing an HIE event which caused cerebral palsy. Our dedicated cerebral palsy birth injury lawyers recovered $9,200,000 for the family to help with future medical expenses and developmental therapy.
What Is Cerebral Palsy?
Cerebral palsy is not just one condition. It’s a group of physical and neurological disorders that permanently affect:
- movement
- posture
- balance
- speech
- eating
- sleeping
- learning
These skills, known as gross motor skills, are only possible with signals sent throughout the body’s central nervous system.
Brain cells called motor neurons send electrical charges to different muscles in the body via the spinal cord. These electrical charges are what tell the muscles in the body to contract, resulting in movement.
With cerebral palsy, the child’s brain injury disrupts these electrical signals. Some muscles in the body may never receive these signals, resulting in paralysis. In other cases, the brain damage can trigger abnormal signals that result in jerky, unpredictable movements.
Cerebral palsy can affect muscle movement throughout the body, including in the arms, hands, legs, feet, trunk, face, and throat. As a result, a child may be unable to walk on their own, speak clearly, or control facial expressions.
What Are Three Types of Cerebral Palsy?
When a child receives a cerebral palsy diagnosis, their doctor will classify it as one of three main subtypes. A child’s cerebral palsy classification and related symptoms will vary based on the part of the brain injured at birth.
What is Spastic Cerebral Palsy?
Spastic cerebral palsy is the most common type of cerebral palsy, appearing in roughly 80% of cases. It stems from damage to the motor cortex, which controls movement in the brain.
As the name implies, muscle spasticity characterizes this subtype. Children with spastic CP experience severe muscle stiffness that primarily affects the arms and legs.
In some cases, this stiffness only occurs on one side of the body (known as spastic hemiplegia). In more severe cases, it can affect all four external limbs (known as quadriplegia) and make autonomous mobility impossible.
The increased muscle tone from spastic cerebral palsy will affect a child’s muscle coordination and overall mobility.
What is Dyskinetic Cerebral Palsy?
Dyskinetic cerebral palsy is the second most common form of cerebral palsy. It stems from basal ganglia injuries and thalamus damage in newborns.
Like with spastic CP, dyskinetic CP causes a number of movement disorders caused by involuntary muscle contractions and spasms. Children with this subtype may either experience slow, continuous writhing movements (athetosis) or rapid jerky movements (chorea).
A child’s muscle tone may range from stiff to floppy with dyskinetic CP. This can impair movement and cause painful cramping sensations.
What is Ataxic Cerebral Palsy?
Ataxic cerebral palsy is the rarest subtype, occurring in less than 5% of all cases. It stems from damage to the cerebellum, which helps coordinate voluntary movements, posture, and balance.
Children with this form of CP struggle with maintaining balance and coordination. They may have issues with depth perception or walking straight. Their movements might seem disorganized and jerky to other people.
What is Mixed Cerebral Palsy?
Mixed cerebral palsy is the diagnosis for when children experience overlapping cerebral palsy symptoms from different subtypes. Typically, this means that a more severe brain injury has occurred, causing damage to several parts of the brain.
Most mixed CP cases are a combination of spastic and dyskinetic subtypes. Researchers estimate that around 10-15% of all cerebral palsy diagnoses are mixed types.
Pinpointing a child’s CP subtype informs doctors of how to provide the proper treatment, therapies, and medication for their symptoms. It can also help parents, families, and caregivers better understand the child’s struggles and provide the best possible support.
What Causes Cerebral Palsy?
All cases of cerebral palsy stem from either underdeveloped brains or brain injuries. These injuries often happen at birth, but brain damage can occur during early childhood as well.
Severe neonatal infections like meningitis or a high fever during childhood years can damage the baby’s developing brain. This can sometimes happen at birth as the result of an uncaught or insufficiently-treated maternal infection transferring to the baby.
Head injuries at birth are another common cause of cerebral palsy. Injuries like an intracranial hemorrhage (brain bleed) and other outcomes of head trauma can cause irreversible injury to the child’s brain.
Other common causes at birth include neonatal strokes, seizures, and prolonged oxygen deprivation (birth asphyxia) during labor and delivery.
Some cerebral palsy cases stem from genetic mutations and other factors like prematurity. These factors fall outside of a medical professional’s control. However, birth injuries are a leading cause of cerebral palsy. Medical malpractice increases the risk of preventable injuries causing irreversible brain damage at birth.
What Are Cerebral Palsy Symptoms?
Some symptoms of cerebral palsy are present from infancy, while others won’t appear until the baby enters early childhood. These symptoms may change and develop as the child grows older.
The most common signs and symptoms of all classifications of cerebral palsy include:
Low APGAR Scores at Birth
Medical professionals assign an APGAR score to each baby at birth. APGAR is an acronym made up of five distinct characteristics that healthcare providers evaluate and score from 0 to 2. These include:
- Appearance (skin color)
- Pulse (heart rate)
- Grimace (reflexes/irritability)
- Activity (muscle tone)
- Respiration (breathing)
A low score indicates the child requires immediate medical intervention. This may include neonatal resuscitation, supplemental oxygen, or therapeutic hypothermia (brain cooling).
Low APGAR scores also indicate the baby has sustained a brain injury that can later affect their muscle movement development.
Seizures and Epilepsy
A seizure occurs from large bursts of abnormal electrical activity in the brain. It can cause rapid eye movements and jerky shaking movements in newborns. It can also disrupt their breathing and put their life at risk.
Neonatal seizures can result from a lack of oxygen at birth, stroke, intracranial hemorrhages, or other severe birth injuries. They can be one of the first signs of a future epilepsy diagnosis, a condition strongly linked to cerebral palsy.
Movement Disorders
Movement disorders are the defining symptom of cerebral palsy.
Almost all children with experience muscle stiffness, impacting their ability to walk or run without limitations. Some children will experience complete paralysis in one or more limbs, taking independent walking out of the question entirely.
Cerebral palsy commonly affects a child’s gait (manner of walking). They may limp or walk with their feet stretched far apart for additional balance. For some cases, children will need to use assistive equipment like walkers or canes to adapt to their walking.
A child’s movement disorders can lead to long-term complications like osteoporosis, spinal deformities, and malnutrition.
Missed Developmental Milestones
A common indicator of cerebral palsy in young children is missing traditional developmental milestones during early childhood.
A child’s movement disorders can prevent them from sitting up, crawling, and walking in the expected timeframe for their age. Vision impairments and hearing impairments can also contribute to missed social and emotional milestones.
Cerebral palsy can also affect a child’s throat muscles used to speaking. This can lead to speech impairments and language disorders like dysarthria that delay a child’s first words.
It’s important to note that a child’s specific symptoms will depend on their unique circumstances. No two cases of cerebral palsy are identical; doctors must carefully evaluate each child to learn their capabilities and limitations.
How is Cerebral Palsy Diagnosed?
Some children exhibit signs of cerebral palsy as newborns. However, doctors do not typically diagnose the condition until children are between two and five years old.
The actual diagnosis of cerebral palsy, especially the type and levels of disability, requires time, testing, and scrutiny from experts. Standard diagnostic procedure for cerebral palsy will include:
Neuroimaging
Doctors will need a detailed scan of the child’s brain to accurately assess where damage took place. This helps to classify their specific subtype and expected cerebral palsy symptoms.
The most preferred neuroimaging scan is a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) test. This is because MRIs create extremely accurate 3D visualizations and use zero radiation, making them safe for newborns.
A second necessary neuroimaging test for diagnosing cerebral palsy is an electroencephalogram (EEG) scan. An EEG records the electrical activity within the child’s brain. Abnormal brain wave patterns can reveal brain injuries and other conditions like epilepsy or tumors.
Postnatal Checkups
Continued monitoring after birth can alert medical professionals to common signs and symptoms of cerebral palsy. During postnatal checkups at different milestones, the doctor conducting the assessment must:
- Examine the child for signs of floppy or stiff muscle tone
- Review child’s medical history, especially when birth trauma occurred
- Monitor the child’s growth and development over time to watch for delays in developmental milestones like standing or walking
- Review parents’ observations of the child’s difficulties with movement
- Consult with specialists, including developmental pediatricians and child neurologists
- Order further testing that might include CT scans, MRIs, EEGs, ultrasounds, evoked potential tests, and blood tests
Gross Motor Function Classification System
Medical professionals sometimes use diagnostic tools to assess the severity of a child’s cerebral palsy complications. The Gross Motor Function Classification System is a respected test that assigns each child to a level based on capabilities.
Children at Level 1 have the least limitations, whereas children at Level 5 will entirely depend on assistive equipment. Doctors can use this to determine the level of intervention and assistance a child will need.
A specialist’s professional analysis can help discover the child’s exact cerebral palsy diagnosis. This, in turn, helps parents and medical providers discover the most effective therapy and treatment options.
How is Cerebral Palsy Treated?
While cerebral palsy has no cure, there are still methods to alleviate the child’s symptoms and improve their abilities.
Treatment plans for people with cerebral palsy may include medications, surgeries, and therapies. Also, medical equipment and assistive technology often play an essential part in the daily life of a child with cerebral palsy.
Medications
Certain medications can help relieve spasticity and other uncomfortable sensations that a child with cerebral palsy may experience.
Baclofen Treatment
Baclofen is a muscle relaxant primarily prescribed to children with spastic cerebral palsy. It can come in the form of oral tablets or as an intrathecal pump inserted into the spinal canal.
Children with cerebral palsy can experience reduced stiffness and spasms, improved mobility, and increased comfort from a Baclofen prescription.
Cerebral Palsy Therapies
All children with cerebral palsy will benefit from at least some form of therapy with licensed specialists. There are many kinds of therapy that offer a wide range of benefits. The most effective therapeutic practices for children with cerebral palsy include:
Physical Therapy
Physical therapy gives the child an opportunity to practice targeted exercises with a therapist to gradually improve their mobility. A combination of stretches, range of motion exercises, and strengthening exercises over time can restore feeling and increase flexibility.
Doctors recommend children with all classifications of cerebral palsy for physical therapy because of its known benefits. Children who begin physical therapy early (from birth to age 4) typically see the best long-term results.
Occupational Therapy
Occupational therapy focuses on practicing everyday tasks in the child’s daily routine. An occupational therapist can help them practice skills like writing, putting on clothes, brushing their teeth, using utensils, and more.
Children with all levels of cerebral palsy can benefit from occupational therapy by building their fine motor skills. Practicing routine tasks at home, at school, and in other familiar environments equips them with a greater sense of independence.
About Occupational Therapy for CP
Speech Therapy
Speech therapy helps children engage and strengthen the muscles in their throat and mouth required to talk. Targeted exercises with a licensed speech language pathologist can improve the child’s ability to communicate, chew, and swallow.
Speech therapy can help children with speech impairments like dysarthria to communicate more effectively. It enables them to effectively communicate with others, giving them a greater sense of independence, confidence, and self-esteem.
Assistive Equipment and Technology
Medical equipment designed specifically for children with cerebral palsy can improve their quality of life. The type and severity of symptoms dictate the assistive devices used.
Children whose cerebral palsy symptoms greatly impair their movement and communication may benefit from adaptive equipment and devices. Equipment like wheelchairs, power scooters, walkers, and canes can increase a child’s independent mobility.
Additionally, cerebral palsy communication devices can make communication possible when a child cannot regain control of their speech.
Surgical Procedures
Surgical procedures are the most aggressive form of cerebral palsy treatment. Doctors are hesitant to operate on young children and will typically attempt to delay procedures until they are older. Surgery is normally the “last resort” after using other treatment methods like therapy and medication.
Selective Dorsal Rhizotomy
A selective dorsal rhizotomy is a procedure where doctors intentionally sever nerve fibers that are misfiring within the spinal cord. The procedure can be effective in reducing a child’s spasticity, especially in their lower limbs.
Hip Muscle Release Surgery
Hip muscle release surgery is a procedure where doctors make cuts into a child’s hip tendons and stretch it out. This can reduce spasticity, improve hip joint stability, and correct a child’s hip subluxation (partial dislocation from the joint).
Osteotomy Surgery
Osteotomy is an orthopedic surgery where doctors cut and reshape a child’s bone so fits better into the joint. When successful, the procedure relieves abnormal tension from tightened muscles and reduces the strain on the joints. It can greatly improve a child’s ability to stand, walk, and move around when cerebral palsy causes partial joint dislocations.
Newest Treatments for Cerebral Palsy
In recent years, modern advancements in neuroscience have created new opportunities for treating a child’s cerebral palsy.
Stem cell therapy involves injecting stem cells into the child’s brain or spinal cord, repairing damaged cells and promoting neuroregeneration. The stem cells develop into neurons, which then rebuild connections with other cells so they can deliver messages to muscles.
Botox injections for cerebral palsy work by temporarily paralyzing specific muscles, reducing muscle stiffness, and improving range of motion. While not a permanent fix, injections can provide temporary relief and improve a child’s positioning and range of motion.
About Newest Cerebral Palsy Treatments
Children with cerebral palsy benefit the most from early intervention. An early diagnosis of symptoms helps doctors to develop effective treatment plans.
About Cerebral Palsy Treatments
Did Medical Malpractice Cause My Child’s Cerebral Palsy?
A cerebral palsy diagnosis can stem from a multitude of birth complications that interact to cause brain damage. But no matter the source, parents deserve to know when preventable medical mistakes amplify the complications of their child’s conditions.
Missing pregnancy complications, improperly monitoring fetal heart rates, or delaying C-sections can all lead to a baby’s preventable brain injury. If a family believes medical negligence worsened a child’s brain damage at birth, legal support may be an option. A cerebral palsy attorney can review the medical records and circumstances to assess whether a claim exists.
Families who have experienced the effects of brain injuries from negligent medical care deserve to know whether they were avoidable. Our cerebral palsy attorneys specialize in birth injury medical malpractice, helping families seek compensation when negligence causes lifelong conditions.
Our team will thoroughly investigate the facts, holding responsible parties accountable by pursuing medical malpractice claims.
What Is the Statute of Limitations in a Birth Injury Lawsuit?
A statute of limitations (SOL) is a law that sets a time limit on how long an injured person has to file a lawsuit after an accident.
It is essential to understand that statutes of limitations vary based on the case and the state where you file. For instance, the deadline for birth injury claims is typically different from other claims, such as injury to private property.
Generally, the clock starts ticking on the date the injury occurred. However, there are exceptions to this rule. In some cases, the statute of limitations starts when a person discovers or reasonably should have discovered an injury. When dealing with government agencies, SOLs can become even more complex.
For example, if the party that injured you was:
- A federal employee
- Employed by a military hospital, Veterans Administration facility, or a federally funded medical entity
You may need to file a birth injury claim under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA). In FTCA cases, claimants must go through certain administrative procedures before filing a lawsuit. In some states, you may have less time to give notice if:
- The negligent party was a local or state government hospital
- The doctors and medical providers are employees of a governmental entity
If you file your case outside of the statute of limitations, the court will typically dismiss it. This means you will not be eligible to recover compensation for you or your child’s injuries.
Determining when a statute of limitations begins on your case can be tricky. Our cerebral palsy attorneys specializing in birth injuries and can tell you important cutoff dates in your state.
How Can Our Cerebral Palsy Attorneys Help?
A detailed expert review of the facts and circumstances of your pregnancy and your child's birth can reveal many things. Namely, it can determine whether a child’s cerebral palsy diagnosis and related symptoms were the result of medical malpractice.
Our Process
Our team of cerebral palsy attorneys specializes in birth injury medical malpractice and can help assess your potential cerebral palsy case. We use our detailed medical negligence case review process to take in your information and begin learning more.
We start by gathering information about your pregnancy by examining records to determine what happened during and after your delivery. This includes evaluating the fetal heart rate strips during labor and any action medical professionals took in the NICU.
We will call in skilled medical experts who review your records and provide insight into where medical professionals went wrong. If we feel medical negligence caused or worsened your baby’s cerebral palsy symptoms, we meet with you to discuss further.
At no point in our legal intake process will we ask you to pay anything. The medical review of your case and the consultation are free. We only receive payment once you do. The sooner you reach out, the sooner we can investigate your case and gather the evidence to support your claim.
We work on a contingency fee basis, meaning you will not pay any legal fees until we win your case. We do not purse any medical malpractice cases unless we fully believe we can win.
Contact us today to schedule your free consultation by calling our toll-free line at 888-987-0005. You can also reach us by filling out our online request form.
Miller Weisbrod Olesky
At Miller Weisbrod Olesky, the attorneys, nurses, and staff understand that parents of children with birth injuries feel overwhelmed. So, every client has the attention and support of a team of trained, compassionate professionals. But we don’t just offer compassion.
We offer a process to help you discover whether your child’s birth injury, HIE, cerebral palsy or brain injury was caused by a medical error.
Call our offices today at 888.987.0005 for experienced assistance in a free consultation.
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- Lyric C. I feel like our voice was heard in a sense of what can possibly go wrong in a delivery and finding us answers. I feel with our settlement, we are now in a comfortable position to provide for our son.
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