Mortality Research & Consulting

Increasing Longevity of Some Children and Adults with Cerebral Palsy

SM Day

This is a brief review of:

Strauss D, Shavelle R, Reynolds R, Rosenbloom L, Day S. Survival in cerebral palsy in the last 20 years: signs of improvement? Dev Med Child Neurol. 2007 Feb;49(2):86-92.

This study reports findings of improved survival in the last 20 years or so (up to 2002) for children with particularly severe functional limitations related to cerebral palsy (CP), and for children and adults with CP who are fed by a feeding tube. In particular, mortality rates for children with CP unable to crawl, walk, or feed themselves, or who were fed by a feeding tube, were found to have fallen by about 3.6% per year from 1980 through 2002. The implications of this are a few additional years of life expectancy for these children (depending on specific functional levels) based on 2002 survival probabilities than based on an older study that used data from 1980-1985.

Author

Share the Post:

Other topics of interest

Parachute Efficacy

Few scientists question the usefulness of randomized controlled trials in assessing the efficacy of medical interventions. Those who argue for

Read More