Exploring the frequency of various risk Factors and its association with types of cerebal palsy in patients visiting NIRM Islamabad

Abstract

Background: Cerebral palsy (CP) is a set of permanent movement disorders which are caused by non-progressive lesions of the developing brain. Other disorders concerning (CP) are disturbances of sensation, cognition, and/or seizure disorder. The current study intended to compare the frequency of factors associated with risk in cerebral palsy and their link with the type of cerebral palsy.Methods: Case-control study was conducted to collect the data through a structured questionnaire. Data was collected from the mother of the CP child and from the mother of healthy individuals at the National Institute of Rehabilitation and Medicine Islamabad. Sample of 400 individuals selected through purposive sampling technique and divided in two groups. 100 were in the case group and 300 were in the control group. For statistical significance, SPSS 20 was used. Results: An aggregate of 400 patients selected in this study among which 100 were assigned as a case group and 300  as a control group. male and female children were equally distributed with N=150 in the control group, similarly equal gender distribution (N=50 for male and female each) was adopted for the case group. Among the risk factors leading to CP development, the most prevalent was maternal infection (56%) followed by poor socioeconomic status (45%), delayed crying(48%) after birth, and high-grade fever with fits leading to spastic CP(44%) and was significantly higher in case group as compared to control(p‹0.05). A higher frequency of CP children with a p-value of 0.00 was found in mothers having pregnancy in the age group 35-40 years. Conclusions: Our study concludes that among the risk factors associated with CP, the most frequent is maternal infection followed by delayed crying, low socioeconomic status and high-grade fever with fits and mother age of pregnancy above 35 years.