Summer is a terrific time of year, especially when you’re a child. There’s no school, no homework, and sometimes a family vacation to look forward to. When I was growing up, our family vacationed for a week at Rehoboth Beach in Delaware. My parents rented a trailer,…
Every year around this time, with summer in full swing, a couple of things have remained constant for as long as I can remember. The first is that my physical therapy routine picks up in intensity as I find myself feeling better in the warm weather and wanting to…
With summer in full swing, I figure this is a good time to go in-depth about adaptive driving. I’ve been driving for about five years, and now that I’m a comfortable driver, I think I can finally address some of the questions I get about the subject. The first…
A new review provides three steps pediatricians can take to better diagnose cerebral palsy in full-term infants who don’t have “red flag” signs of the disease. These strategies may help children with CP to gain earlier access to interventions — allowing treatment to begin during the critical periods of…
Sometimes I’ll set out with a column idea and it gets completely transformed over the course of the week. This was one of those times. I initially intended to talk about the emotional struggles of people with disabilities over different life phases, such as graduating from high school and…
Mild hand impairments in children with unilateral spastic cerebral palsy are linked to lesions in specific regions of the brain made up of white matter — myelinated nerve segments, or axons, that are responsible for the transmission of nerve signals between different areas of the brain, a study says.
Australian pediatricians and physiotherapists said sharing skills and good communication between multidisciplinary clinical teams is essential to improve diagnosis and manage hip displacement in children with cerebral palsy. The study, “Health professionals’ experiences and barriers encountered when implementing hip surveillance for children with cerebral palsy,” was published in the…
Stem cells derived from the umbilical cord can protect nerve cells from injury caused before birth, a study in mice has found. The results favor moving forward with cell therapies as potential therapeutic alternatives to treating neurological conditions caused by brain injury, such as cerebral palsy.
A new study suggests that socioeconomically disadvantaged children with cerebral palsy are at greater risk of having more severe disease. The study, “Impact of social disadvantage on cerebral palsy severity,” was published in the journal Developmental Medicine & Child Neurology. The study used data from the…
School summer vacation has just begun. My husband and I sit in bed after our two children fall asleep and we discuss summer plans and trips. We always have accessibility issues at the back of our minds. I know he loves to go camping, but my disability…