Birth Injuries

Different Causes of Cerebral Palsy

Modern science can not explain most incidents of cerebral palsy, the statistic approaches 80% where we do not know what caused it. Where we can decipher a cause, the explanation can often be traced to either trauma, metabolic disorders, infection, and the kind which occurs during labor and delivery.  Actually only about 5-10% of cases of cerebral palsy occur during labor and delivery and obviously not all of these are a physician’s or hospital’s fault.  Only a select few are caused by medical negligence.

The different causes of cerebral palsy that affect various parts of the body obviously affect the brain, and so weather it is due to infection, or trauma or lack of oxygen, or an unknown cause, they each affect a different part of the brain and that is what leads to the cerebral palsy.  Cerebral palsy can manifest in different ways and you may not know it until the child is older.  That is the effects of cerebral palsy are present when the child is born, but as the child gets older and the voluntary movements come out, that is when you realize the full extent of the cerebral palsy.  If an infection is the cause, it may be one sided versus the other side of the brain.  If it was caused due to a lack of oxygen, it usually affects the total brain and will affect the upper and lower extremities.

There are many ways to time a brain injury to a fetus that suffered from Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy (a lack of oxygen or lack of blood flow). This is necessary in mal practice legal cases where determining levels of responsibility will often depend on establishing the sequence of events and timing. The case will often depend upon weather the nurse or doctor or hospital under review had sufficient warning of the events that occurred. If they did, then they should bear responsibility for the subsequent injury to the baby. If they didn’t have warning, they should not be held accountable.

There are various ways you can time a Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathic insult to a baby’s brain:

1. Look, when did the baby have seizures;
2. check the laboratory values – specifically nucleated red blood cells;
3. Radiographic studies – sonograms, head MRI’s or CAT scans are useful to help time the injury.

And of course you want to check the fetal heart rate tracings. Because depending upon what the fetal heart tracings show, that can help you time and insult or injury to a baby’s brain. It is usually not one cause in isolation that helps time an injury, but rather a combination of factors. In other words the laboratory factors, the factors involving the radiographic studies, the fetal heart rate tracings, putting all of those factors and others together, help one time when an injury Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathic injury occurred during labor and delivery.