Therapy Management of the Child with Cerebral Palsy: an Overview

Abstract

Cerebral palsy (CP) is the most common physical disability of childhood with a prevalence of 2.5–3.6 cases per 1000 live births (Christensen et al., Dev Med Child Neurol 56:59–65, 2014). CP is defined as a nonprogressive injury to the developing fetal or infant brain that results in movement and posture impairments, activity limitations, and participation restrictions (Rosenbaum et al. 2007). Although the brain injury in CP is nonprogressive, the impairments and limitations may become more severe with growth and often require services from multiple health professionals.

Clinical management of children with CP requires a collaborative inter-professional team approach to address the multiple health, function, and mobility problems that occur during the child’s lifetime (Chan and Miller 2014; Aisen et al. 2011). The team includes medical and rehabilitation health professionals to address the primary and secondary conditions associated with CP. The medical providers consist of primary care physicians and specialty providers including developmental pediatricians, orthopedic surgeons, neurologists, and pediatric physiatrists. The rehabilitation providers include physical therapists (PTs), occupational therapists (OTs), speech and language pathologists (SLPs), orthotists, biomedical engineers, and experts in adaptive equipment and assistive devices.

This section on Therapy Management of the Child with CP contains 40 chapters which provide evidence on the roles of rehabilitation professionals in the care of children with CP. We use the International Classification of Functioning, Impairment, Disability, and Health (ICF) model to provide a framework for the subsections and chapter topics to ensure that multiple components of health and function are included (WHO 2001). World Health Organization, Geneva, 2001). This section focuses on promoting family-centered care by expanding health care beyond impairments and limitations to include child and family goals and participation in the context of personal and environmental factors (Rosenbaum and Stewart, 2004; Rosenbaum and Gorter, 2011).