What are the causes of cerebral palsy in children?

In the past half a century, the number of disabled children diagnosed with cerebral palsy has increased throughout the world, including in the CIS countries. And if in the middle of the last century, except for narrow specialists, no one knew what it means CP, nowadays almost any person has relatives or acquaintances whom this trouble has touched directly.

What are the causes of cerebral palsy and the terrible increase in the number of children with this diagnosis? Why do absolutely healthy parents, women with a normal pelvis, living in ecologically clean regions and following all the recommendations of doctors during pregnancy, still have children with cerebral palsy?

Presently, cerebral palsy is not a separate disease, not an etiologic diagnosis, it is a descriptive term that unites children with non-progressive disorders of voluntary movements (ataxia, spasticity, hyperkinesis). On the one hand, the unification of children with similar disorders into a single group, whose name is cerebral palsy, helps to concentrate efforts on the treatment and formation of motor skills for the most effective rehabilitation. And on the other hand, this generalization makes it difficult to diagnose early, search for the necessary preventive measures, and also treatment at the very beginning of the child's illness (in the acute period).

ICP is a multifaceted disease. It affects, first of all, the children's central nervous system, i.e. Spinal cord and brain. As a consequence, there are deviations in the development of the child, varying in severity. There may be violations of the muscular and motor systems - then the child will either partially or completely limit movement, coordination will be disrupted. Approximately 70-85 percent of children with cerebral palsy have speech disrupted (it is either disjointed or completely absent). Some children have a mental disorder, others have strabismus or poor eyesight. Someone also has concomitant diseases - epilepsy, hydrocephalus, etc. Most of the children have these disorders in various combinations. That is, each child's disease is expressed individually. Calling the disease a single term of cerebral palsy, doctors identified several forms in it. And on how seriously the disease struck the baby's central nervous system, his entire life and personal capabilities will depend.

In America, cerebral palsy occurs in 1-2 children for every 1000 newborns. In Russia, we do not have accurate statistics, but we have the incidence, according to various sources, of 6-12 (!) Children per 1000.

Why are children born with cerebral palsy born?

Today, doctors call many causes of cerebral palsy in children. At the same time, they put forward a certain defeat of the fetal brain during intrauterine development, indicating more than 400 factors, in particular, chronic and acute diseases of the mother, infectious agents, harmful habits of the pregnant or father of the child, and even psychological discomfort! However, today, with the highest level of diagnosis of intrauterine pathologies, the failure of these causes is obvious!

An example of the evidence can be called at least the fact that babies born by cesarean section are practically not diagnosed with cerebral palsy. And this is even despite the diseases of mothers (cardiac, endocrine, neurological and even cerebral palsy), nephropathy or toxicosis in pregnancy, threatening miscarriages and others.

And rhythm-stimulating drugs began to be used abroad since the 1950s, and in our country - since the early 60's, and now in our country they are used uncontrollably and almost everywhere. And it was from that time that a sharp increase in the number of children with cerebral palsy began.

The main cause of cerebral palsy was the creator of this term, the neurology of the XIX century. Little, called hypoxia in childbirth (oxygen deficiency) and birth trauma, damaging the baby's brain.

Thus, an increase in the number of sick children with cerebral palsy recently indicates that the number of birth injuries is increasing . And this, in turn, is directly related to the use of rhodostimulation.

During childbirth, physiological (ie, normal) processes must occur that are in close unity. First bouts prepare the uterus for childbirth - open the cervix and prepare the birth canal. Normally, the child is head to the birth canal and in a close (biochemical and biophysical) community with his mother is preparing for birth. The head of the baby is adjusted to the birth canal in size, due to the flexibility of combining the skull bones in children.

The nutrition of the baby being born with the necessary substances and oxygen occurs through the umbilical cord and the mother's placenta, therefore any acceleration of the delivery process can easily disrupt the harmony of the mother and baby in the general process of birth. But in today's realities, in midwifery, there has been a substitution of assisted delivery for aggressive intervention in the process through unnecessary, often dangerous methods.

Here are the main ways of interfering with the natural process of childbirth:

1) Piercing a bladder with amniotic fluid ahead of time. As a result, during fights, the head of the child will be traumatized from the bones of the pelvis of the mother, since the filled bubble works for a certain time as a "shock absorber" - until the baby's head prepares to pass the birth canal.

2) Acceleration (or artificial triggering) by drugs or other methods of delivery before the baby has prepared for the passage of the birth canal. In this case, the child's head is traumatized about the birth canal.

3) Stimulation of fights with oxytocin and other drugs, as a result of which the child receives not only trauma, but in addition and hypoxia - lack of oxygen and nutrition (mainly for the brain). After all, with every fight, because of the spasms of the spiral arteries, the blood circulation in the placenta slows or stops. A stimulated contractions (excessive in duration and strength) violate the harmony of mother-child interaction. Hypoxia leads to damage to the endothelium of the capillaries and impaired self-regulation of cerebral vessels of the infant. As a result, venous pressure rises, and cerebral blood flow increases. These are all causes of damage to the child's brain: edema, hemorrhage, ischemia. That is, this is the main cause of cerebral palsy.

The child, as a result of accelerating the natural process of childbirth, receives dangerous brain damage. And because of this, these children have hemi and tetroparesis, dystonia, spasticity, ataxia, hyperkinesia, curvature of the trunk, face and limbs, vision, hearing and hydrocephalus after birth.

The fact that the main causes of cerebral palsy - hypoxia and birth trauma during the stimulation of labor, is confirmed by statistics: in boys, cerebral palsy occurs 1.3 times more frequently than in girls. 3/4 cases of severe and moderate tetraplegia in the diagnosis of cerebral palsy occur in boys. Why? Because the head of the boys born is usually larger in size than that of the girls, which means that the boys are given birth trauma and hypoxia in unnatural management of labor more often.

Let's draw brief conclusions. To reduce the incidence of cerebral palsy, special attention should be paid to the practice of obstetrics, which has developed in our country.

After all, midwifery standards, for which they work today, are fuzzy, vague and do not take into account the possibility of damage to the child's CNS due to such stimulation. And as a result, it affects the children: delays in motor or speech development, ranging from walking on tiptoes (due to increased tone in the flexors of the feet) and until the diagnosis of cerebral palsy, hearing and vision, hydrocephalic and epileptic syndromes, ADHD (varying degrees of severity 35% of modern children), autonomic nervous system disorders in different versions or delayed mental development right up to autism.

Therefore, it is necessary to increase obstetrical responsibility for the outcome of childbirth and the further condition of the child. Today, the causes of cerebral palsy are not associated with the activities of the obstetrician who received the birth. This is because we do not use such precise methods of diagnostics as MRI and CT immediately after the birth of the baby, and in children the motor disturbances become obvious usually only towards the end of their first year of life or later.

Tip: you need to select a good, reliable obstetrician for childbirth. The government should prohibit the stimulation of childbirth on such a large scale. It is necessary to strictly consider the means for rhodostimulation, to control their use. In addition, equip each maternity home with electrical means for the constant monitoring of the baby's heart contractions and contractile activity of the uterus, which will prevent hypoxia and help you choose the right method of labor. It is also necessary to equip the maternity hospital with CT and MRI diagnostic devices - this will help to identify possible brain damage in the early period and expand treatment options. And advice for moms: from the first days you need to observe a child from a good neurologist. Breast pills are sometimes diagnosed with a "cerebral palsy threat", and this can be cured, because in the first year many neurological problems are solved. The main thing here is not to miss the time.