Spastic diplegia
It is a chronic neuromuscular condition of hypertonia and spasticity in the muscles of the lower extremities of the human body, manifested as an especially high and constant "tightness" or "stiffness",[1][2] usually in the legs, hips and pelvis.
In addition, because leg tightness often leads to instability in ambulation, extra muscle tension usually develops in the shoulders, chest, and arms due to compensatory stabilization movements, regardless of the fact that the upper body itself is not directly affected by the condition.
[citation needed] The abnormally high muscle tone that results creates lifelong difficulty with all voluntary and passive movement in the legs, and in general creates stress over time, depending on the severity of the condition in the individual, the constant spasticity ultimately produces pain, muscle/joint breakdown including tendinitis and arthritis, premature physical exhaustion (i.e., becoming physically exhausted even when you internally know that you have more energy than you are able to use), contractures, spasms, and progressively worse deformities/mis-alignments of bone structure around areas of the tightened musculature as the person's years progress.
[citation needed] No type of CP is officially a progressive condition, and indeed spastic diplegia does not clinically "get worse" given the nerves, damaged permanently at birth, neither recover nor degrade.
[citation needed] Unlike any other condition that may present with similar effects, spastic diplegia is entirely congenital in origin - that is, it is almost always acquired shortly before or during a baby's birth process.
Things like exposure to toxins, traumatic brain injury, encephalitis, meningitis, drowning, or suffocation do not tend to lead to spastic diplegia in particular or even cerebral palsy generally.
[citation needed] As a matter of everyday maintenance, muscle stretching, range of motion exercises, yoga, contact improvisation, modern dance, resistance training, and other physical activity regimens are often utilized by those with spastic CP to help prevent contractures and reduce the severity of symptoms.
[citation needed] Major clinical treatments for spastic diplegia are:[citation needed] Unusually, cerebral palsy, including spastic cerebral palsy, is notable for a glaring overall research deficiency - the fact that it is one of the very few major groups of conditions on the planet in human beings for which medical science has not yet (as of 2011) collected wide-ranging empirical data on the development and experiences of young adults, the middle aged and older adults.
The vast majority of empirical data on the various forms of cerebral palsy is concerned near-exclusively with children (birth to about 10 years of age) and sometimes pre-teens and early teens (11-13).
Some doctors attempt to provide their own personal justifications for keeping their CP specialties purely pediatric, but there is no objectively apparent set of reasons backed by any scientific consensus as to why medical science has made a point of researching adult cases of multiple sclerosis, muscular dystrophy and the various forms of cancer in young and older adults, but has failed to do so with CP.
There are a few orthopaedic surgeons and neurosurgeons who claim to be gathering pace with various studies as of the past few years, [citation needed] but these claims do not yet seem to have been matched by real-world actualization in terms of easily accessible and objectively verifiable resources available to the general public on the internet and in-person, where many, including medical-science researchers and doctors themselves, would more than likely agree such resources would ideally belong.
Variances in reported rates of incidence across different geographical areas in industrialized countries are thought to be caused primarily by discrepancies in the criteria used for inclusion and exclusion.
