Celebral Diplegia : a type of Cerebral Palsy

Dear Ask The Doctor: Hi Doc My brother is 57, was born with deformed right leg and arm, subsequently put in splints for the first 18 months of his life. he coulod not talk until he was seven and Doctors found he had a mental handicap. He spent most of his life in Care and now, as he gets older we are trying to get support for his condition. The doctors diagnosis is Celebral Diplegia and I wondered if you can thow some light on the condition. So little seems to hae been written about it. Thank you Ken Dixon

Dear Ken: Cerebral Diplegia is a type of Cerebral Palsy which is a disorder affecting the development of movement and posture that is believed to arise from non progressive disturbances in the developing fetal or infant brain. In addition to the motor disorders that characterize cerebral palsy, which limit a patient's activities, individuals with cerebral palsy often display epilepsy, secondary musculoskeletal problems, and disturbances of sensation, perception, cognition, communication, and behavior. Cerebral palsy has traditionally been classified on the basis of the type of motor disorder that occurs, with variable numbers and descriptions of types The revised classification now in use defines 3 main categories of motor disorder, as follows: Spastic (70-80%), Dyskinetic (10-15%) and Ataxic (less than 5%). The case of your brother is a Spastic Cerebral palsy, classified according to involvement of the extremities: Diplegia ( 30-40%) the lower extremities are affected more than the upper extremities and in some cases are solely involved. The other types are: quadriplegia (four extremities involved), hemiplegia (half of the body involved), monoplegia (just 1 extremity involved).