Factors associated with motor difficulty for Cerebral Palsy among infants in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Cerebral Palsy (CP) is one of the most common and costly neurodevelopmental disorder of posture and movement among infants. CP has no cure, hence, intervention from the earliest is crucial to improve the quality of life of the patient. To magnify the complications with CP, the exact causes of CP is yet not clear. However, there had been many attempts to find the risk factors associated with CP around the world, but, contribution from middle and lower income countries on the subject of CP is noticeably lacking. Further, early detection of CP becomes time consuming as the necessary technology is limited and expensive, therefore, these countries are in dire need for alternate early CP detection method. Motor delays are considered as the first warning sign of possibility of CP. Predicting motor difficulty (MD) for CP can be considered as a huge leap on CP in developing countries. The objective of this study is to analyze MD to find the association of that with risk factors. Sample size of 170 were selected from risk infants discharged at the pediatric professorial Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the North Colombo Teaching Hospital (NCTH), Sri Lanka, over a period of two years. Motor and communication disorders were assessed when they visited the clinics for follow up. Among that 170, 41.76% were identified with MD. There were significant associations between ventilated, hypoglycemia, anemia/blood transfusion, septicemia, congenital hypothyroidism, abnormal neuro-imagining and antenatal risk with motor difficulty. Additionally, prematurity and jaundice were also considered when fitting the model. According to the final model anemia/blood transfusion, septicemia and antenatal risk positively contributed to the increased risk of motor difficulty.