What Causes Cerebral Palsy?
Essentially there are two problems which can cause cerebral palsy:
- A developmental brain malformation – where the brain does not develop normally;
- A properly developing brain can suffer from neurological damage.
In the former situation, there is nothing that could have been done by your doctor to prevent your child’s cerebral palsy. In the event of the later, a thorough review of your child’s health history along with a series of medical and neurological tests can determine the cause. Since many factors can cause injury to the developing brain which can cause cerebral palsy, it is sometimes impossible to determine what caused or what might have been done to prevent the injury.
The seriousness of the brain damage depends on the type of damage and when it occurred in the baby’s development. If for instance there is a condition called intraventricular hemorrhage – where there is bleeding into the brain – the damage can be extensive. An unborn child’s brain is extremely sensitive to oxygen loss and the longer there is oxygen depravation, the more extensive the damage.
Brain injury accounts for between 10 – 15% of cerebral palsy cases in the U.S. These types of injuries can include damage caused by a lack of oxygen, bleeding into the brain and an infection like meningitis. Despite all of the advances in monitoring techniques, in many instances a brain injury caused during delivery could have been prevented. Errors by medical teams are still responsible for thousands of cerebral palsy cases each year.
Since it is impossible for a parent to determine what caused their child’s brain injury or cerebral palsy and if a preventable medical mistake is the root cause, only a highly trained legal/medical team that can either help you claim the damages you may be entitled to, or set your mind at ease regarding the responsibility of the health professionals that cared for you during your pregnancy, labor and birth.
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