Cerebral Palsy in the U.S.

Cerebral palsy is considered a developmental disorder because it influences the way children develop. There are many other developmental disabilities that people are familiar with, like Down syndrome, autism and epilepsy, but currently in the U.S., more people have cerebral palsy than any other developmental disability. According to recent statistics, approximately two out of every thousand children have cerebral palsy. Each year, over 5,000 infants and toddlers and 1,500 preschool children are diagnosed with cerebral palsy. Nation wide, approximately 500,000 people have cerebral palsy.

Since there is no national system which monitors cerebral palsy, we don’t know if the incidence of cerebral palsy is increasing, declining, or remaining constant. While it was expected that use of the electronic fetal heart rate monitor during labor and delivery would reduce the incidence of cerebral palsy, studies indicate that those hopes have not materialized. The reason appears to be the very high instances of human error during the birthing process.

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