What is Cerebral Palsy? Understanding Causes & Prevention

Matt Williams:
Cerebral palsy is a condition where the brain is permanently damaged, resulting in what's called spasticity, but also can affect cognitive functioning, communication, language, executive functioning. Really, all aspects of your life can be affected if you have cerebral palsy. Now, not all cerebral palsies are due to physician negligence. You can have cerebral palsy because of a genetic disorder. You can have cerebral palsy because something happens in utero before the birth process, which results in that brain injury. But oftentimes, cerebral palsy can be caused by a lack of oxygen at or near the time of birth. It's very often that the clinicians managing the labor and delivery will have signs that the fetus is not getting enough oxygen. There's signs that the fetus is not tolerating labor. The fetal heart rate tracings can start to show patterns in the fetus's heart rate, which suggests that the baby is not getting enough oxygen. If the doctors allow that to go on for too long, eventually that lack of oxygen is going to cause a permanent brain injury. That's why it's very important for nurses and doctors to closely monitor the fetal heart rate tracing. It's very important that they institute different interventions to help the baby get more oxygen, like turning mom, giving oxygen to mom, turning off the Pitocin, telling mom not to push so hard, because all those things put more stress on the fetus.

The goal to prevent cerebral palsy is to relieve the stress on the fetus during those last few moments of labor and delivery. If a physician does not act appropriately, or if the nurses do not act appropriately and allow that hostile environment to the fetus to go on for too long, what can happen is the lack of oxygen eventually causes a severe and permanent brain injury to portions of the brain that can cause cerebral palsy. If that happens, the baby will have a lifetime of deficits and potential limitations because of that injury.