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Seminar discusses cerebral palsy management
CEREBRAL PALSY was a disorder of movement and posture that resulted from a non-progressive lesion or injury of the immature brain resulting from different etiologies in the pre-natal, peri-natal or post-natal period, disclosed Dr OP Singh here on Sunday.
CEREBRAL PALSY was a disorder of movement and posture that resulted from a non-progressive lesion or injury of the immature brain resulting from different etiologies in the pre-natal, peri-natal or post-natal period, disclosed Dr OP Singh here on Sunday.
Faculty member in the Institute of Medical Sciences in Banaras Hindu University, Dr OP Singh was delivering a lecture on ‘Motor Control and Rehabilitative Aspects in Cerebral Palsy Children’ during a national seminar on ‘Advanced Lower Limb Orthotic Management of Cerebral Palsy’ at KN Udupa auditorium in BHU on Sunday. The seminar was organised by Mehta Rehab Centre.
“The underlying cause of this disorder is always a damage of the first motor neuron. Maladaptation results from the inadequate maturation of the nervous pathways. Myelination of these pathways does not occur and synaptic connections do not develop fully or at the proper time”, he said, adding different mechanism could be affected in spastic patients.
Dr Singh said that motor learning joined the cognitive and affective aspects of learning to play a continual role in forming and re-forming an individual’s behaviour. “Motor learning begins to develop a body image on the basis of a movement gestalt”, he added.
Dr Mukesh Doshi of Mumbai delivered a lecture on ‘Recent Advances in Orthosis for Cerebral Palsy’ and said that cerebral palsy was a challenging task in management and rehabilitation programmes.
He said that the management programme in cerebral palsy kept changing and had to be custom made depending upon the individual’s need. He spoke at length about upper extremity, lower extremity, mobility devices, night splint, night spinal orthosis and wheelchair.
Dr MV Raghvan of Orissa dwelt upon ‘Orthotic Management of Cerebral Palsy and Gail Analysis’. He said that orthoses, mainly the lower limb, were the most commonly used and prescribed orthoses in clinical practice.
“Most clinicians, trained to first consider a diagnosis and only then think in terms of a functional impairment often do not know where to start in prescribing lower limb orthoses”, he said.He said that knowing the patients’ abilities, functions and limitations is a critical part of selecting and or designing an appropriate orthoses for a patient.
“An important part of the orthotist’s contribution to the patient’s care is to identify the most effective orthosis for a patient given applicable parameters such as age, sex, height and weight, muscle strength and range of motion of joints”, he added. Prakash Mehta conducted the programme.
