Early symptoms of cerebral palsy in premature infants
Release time : 06/07/2025 09:30:01
Premature infant cerebral palsy, which is a common condition among premature infants, typically places immense psychological and financial burdens on families.
Let's take a closer look at cerebral palsy, a common condition in premature infants. What are the symptoms of cerebral palsy in premature infants? What should we do if we want to treat it?
Premature infants with cerebral palsy, an early symptom is the syndrome caused by non-progressive brain damage from infancy to newborn or infant.
The symptoms of cerebral palsy in premature infants are often easily noticeable because their behavior is unusual compared to that of normal infants.
In simple terms, preterm infants with cerebral palsy primarily exhibit central motor disturbances and posture abnormalities, often accompanied by varying degrees of intellectual disabilities, visual, auditory, language, behavioral, emotional, psychological, and other impairments.
In the early stages, we can usually distinguish between preterm infants with cerebral palsy and normal babies. Children with cerebral palsy often exhibit varying degrees of motor dysfunction, with some unable to sit or stand upright.
Some children have stiff muscles throughout their body, making it impossible for them to walk.
Cerebral palsy, a syndrome characterized by non-progressive brain damage during the developmental period within 1 month after birth, mainly manifests as central motor disorders and posture abnormalities.
May also be accompanied by intellectual disabilities, convulsions, abnormal behavior or sensory and perceptual disturbances, and require excluding the occurrence of central paralysis due to progressive diseases in normal children and transient developmental lag.
Upon reaching adulthood, such children generally lack the ability to care for themselves. Moreover, cerebral palsy often accompanies multiple developmental deficiencies, including intellectual disabilities, visual, auditory, and dental impairments.
Are early symptoms of cerebral palsy in premature infants obvious? Premature infants with cerebral palsy are a common condition. The question is, do the early symptoms of such conditions become apparent? The answer is affirmative. There is a significant difference between premature infants with cerebral palsy and typical children. Premature infants with cerebral palsy can be identified through four distinct characteristics: delayed motor development, abnormal muscle tone and posture, reduced or abnormal active movements, and/or abnormal reflexes. These four aspects are all related to the child's motor abilities. Thus, it is possible to observe whether an infant has cerebral palsy by examining their movement patterns.
1. Lack of motor development and decreased active movement: Typically, at the age of 3 months, normal infants can raise their heads when lying prone and kick their legs while lying on their back.
However, cerebral palsy patients rarely exhibit these movements and are unlikely to interact with others.
At the age of 4-5 months, normal children can actively reach out to touch objects, while patients with cerebral palsy rarely move their upper limbs.
2. Hypertonia: Pediatric patients with cerebral palsy have hypertonia or hypotonia compared to normal children.
3. Posture abnormalities: Pediatric patients with cerebral palsy often have their head tilted backward, fall over when sitting at 6 months old, resembling "no spinal bones", and are unable to stand independently on one leg.
The difficulty in urinating, the inability to change diapers, etc.
4. Reflex abnormalities: In normal infants, the head position suddenly lowers when they are startled, which is reminiscent of an embrace response (akin to being startled). This usually disappears by the age of 6 months, but in patients with cerebral palsy, it persists.
There are also various types of reflection anomalies.
How to judge preterm infant cerebral palsy? In fact, judging preterm infant cerebral palsy and early diagnosis of symptoms in preterm infants are basically the same. The main approach is from four aspects: motor development delay, muscle tone and posture abnormality, reduced active movement, and/or abnormal movements and reflex abnormalities.
In fact, the signs of cerebral palsy in premature infants may not appear until later in life and the complex nature of development makes it challenging to make an early diagnosis.
Children with cerebral palsy are normal and healthy to a certain extent during the neonatal period.
Because the tension of the extensor muscles is too high, the infant can lift his head early in the prone position, and the tension of the lower limbs is too high. Before 5 to 6 months, when the child is pulled to the seat, the hips and knees are stretched and stood up. During this period, normal infants can only pull to the seat.
Cerebral palsy is a type of motor function disorder, which is a disability.
There are no quantitative standards for motor dysfunction as cerebral palsy, and there are no signs, imaging or laboratory tests that can determine the diagnosis early.
Cerebral palsy is always a exploratory diagnosis because positive evidence is indirect and is based on behavior and development over a certain period of time.
Therefore, if one wishes to ascertain whether a preterm infant has cerebral palsy, it is advisable to frequently observe the child's behavior, as the manifestations of cerebral palsy in preterm infants are significantly different from those of normal infants.
Generally, it is possible to judge whether a child has cerebral palsy by observing their behavior.
What is the treatment for preterm infant cerebral palsy? In fact, preterm infant cerebral palsy is no longer considered a rare condition according to current medical developments. The main treatment for preterm infant cerebral palsy in the current era primarily involves conservative measures. This is because preterm infant cerebral palsy often stems from multiple causes, making it difficult to "treat to the root cause" and thus often requiring generalized treatment approaches. Currently, the main treatments for preterm infant cerebral palsy include pharmacotherapy, comprehensive rehabilitation therapy, and neurotargeted repair technology. While these three therapeutic methods have different focuses, they all play a role in improving the symptoms of cerebral palsy in infants.
Now, let's take a look at the three methods for treating preterm infant cerebral palsy.
Pharmacological therapy: neuronal nutrition drugs, muscle relaxants, blood circulation-enhancing drugs, etc.
Drugs that include the construction and repair of brain tissue (cells) such as phosphatidylcholine (including phospholipids, brain phospholipids, sphingomyelin, etc.), can repair damage to the cell membrane caused by trauma, bleeding, or hypoxia, protect nerve cells, accelerate the conduction of nerve excitation, and improve learning and memory functions.
Comprehensive rehabilitation medicine, such as physical therapy, encompasses exercises for gross motor, fine motor, balance, and coordination training; this includes crawling, purposeful pointing (nose, ears, etc.), grasping objects, holding objects, sitting up, swaying, walking, running, etc. Physical therapy involves techniques such as neuroelectric stimulation therapy, warm therapy, hydrotherapy, etc. Additionally, occupational therapy, a specialized form of rehabilitation available in hospitals or clinics, is available in urban settings. For families with sufficient financial resources, it can be an option; however, the effectiveness of these treatments varies.
Neural Targeted Regeneration Technology: Through targeted regenerative therapy, nerve growth factors are delivered to the damaged site through interventional means.
Activates dormant nerve cells, facilitates self-renewal and replacement of damaged or deceased nerve cells, reconstructing neural circuitry, and promoting organ regeneration.
Misunderstandings in the treatment of early premature cerebral palsy In fact, early premature cerebral palsy is discovered early, the more helpful it is for treatment. However, many times it falls into the misunderstanding of treating premature cerebral palsy, thus missing the best treatment time. These treatments for premature infants with cerebral palsy are regrettable.
In fact, the symptoms of cerebral palsy in premature infants mainly occur in physical expression. But many times, it is easy for parents to confuse this interpretation. For example, although some parents find that their children have unexplained crying, poor feeding, being too quiet, and being stretched when they are scared before they are half a year old, they simply think that their children are young and weak, and are they catching a cold? Or digestive problems, directing problems to common diseases in normal children.
When some parents see their child rolling, lying down, sitting, standing, walking and other sports development lagging behind other normal children of the same age, they often simply think that it is caused by premature labor, and the child will slowly recover with natural growth and development., but they generally hold a wait-and-see attitude, or when they discover that the child has abnormal posture during exercise, they often think that there is a problem with the child's bones and muscles. This often causes children with cerebral palsy to miss out on better treatment time.
Blindly seeking medical treatment is also a major misunderstanding in treating premature infants with cerebral palsy. Many times, once a doctor diagnoses a child with cerebral palsy, the first attitude parents often take is to blindly seek medical treatment everywhere, hoping to relieve the child's motor dysfunction through routine "injections and medication."
As everyone knows, children with cerebral palsy are not a "simple" common disease and cannot be completely cured with ordinary treatment techniques.
The medical part covered in this article is for reading and reference only.
If you feel unwell, it is recommended to seek medical attention immediately, and the medical diagnosis and treatment will be subject to offline diagnosis.