Receiving a diagnosis of cerebral palsy for your child leaves your child and your family facing an uncertain future. Defining the condition as mild, moderate, or severe helps give families the guidance they need to obtain the care their child requires to live the best possible quality of life. A classification as mild, moderate, or severe describes the severity of the impairment so parents, doctors, and educators can better provide services and support.
While no universal classification system for cerebral palsy exists, and providers and educators may differ in their classifications, most cases fall into one of the three basic categories described below.
In some cases, cerebral palsy results from preventable birth injuries caused by oxygen deprivation or medical negligence during labor and delivery, leading families to pursue a birth injury medical malpractice claim.
Difference Between Mild, Moderate, and Severe Cerebral Palsy
Mild Cerebral Palsy
First, cerebral palsy may be spastic or non-spastic, depending on the location of the brain damage and the severity of jerky muscle movements. In mild cases of cerebral palsy, the child retains mobility and can walk without support, though they may need mobility assistance until around age four.
An individual with mild cerebral palsy may have difficulty with fine motor skills, balance, and coordination. They experience stiff muscles and joints. Mild cerebral palsy may not be diagnosed until after the toddler years, when the child experiences delayed milestones and shows symptoms such as toe-walking.
Mild cerebral palsy may affect only one side of the body or only the legs and not the arms.
Moderate Cerebral Palsy
Moderate cerebral palsy causes more significant challenges. A child with moderate cerebral palsy often requires leg braces and assistive equipment to walk. They may require ongoing physical therapy and medications to maximize their muscle use. Adaptive technology assists with accomplishing routine daily tasks. They may have stiffness or floppiness and experience issues with balance, coordination, and fine motor skills. They typically exhibit jerky or uncontrolled muscle movements. Moderate cerebral palsy sometimes causes problems with speech and difficulty swallowing.
Around 30%-50% of individuals with moderate cerebral palsy also have epilepsy and experience seizures.
Severe Cerebral Palsy
Those diagnosed with severe cerebral palsy require lifelong care due to severe stiffness or floppiness. They typically require mobility equipment, such as wheelchairs, due to spastic quadriplegia or quadriparesis, which means the condition impairs all four limbs, the torso, and the face. Severe cerebral palsy also causes speech problems, sensory issues, intellectual disability, and cognitive impairment. Those with severe cerebral palsy also experience epileptic seizures and require medications to manage their symptoms. Severe cerebral palsy requires lifelong, full-time care.
What Causes Cerebral Palsy?
While no parent is ever truly prepared for their child’s cerebral palsy diagnosis, knowing the differences in the impacts of cerebral palsy depending on the severity of the damage to the brain’s function helps parents to appropriately prepare for their child’s future.
Cerebral palsy is not a genetic condition. Instead, it’s caused by an abnormality or interference with the child’s brain development that takes place during pregnancy, labor and delivery, during the moments after birth, or from prolonged jaundice after birth.
When cerebral palsy arises from interuterine infections or birth injuries that cause hypoxia, or lack of oxygen to the brain, it’s categorized as a preventable birth injury. Parents may recover compensation for the medical expenses, special educational costs, and emotional damages caused by birth injury and cerebral palsy by filing a medical malpractice claim agains the negligent provider and contacting a Phoenix medical malpractice lawyer.