Photo: Bruce Milligan , CEO of CP League Queensland introduces Maryka Jonkers

 

 

Cerebral Palsy Australia's National Conference 23-25TH MAY 2007
by Harvey Brunt

Instalment 1

I have just returned from the CP Australia 2007 bieenial conference held on the Gold Coast. The conference was attended by over 250 people from around Australia, Fiji and NZ.

On the 23rd was a workshop, mainly designed for physios, OT's and speech therapists. I found this workshop to be extremely interesting. It covered the work of the Melbourne Gait laboratory and explained the methodology of analysing the differences between primary and secondary causes of poor gait such that surgery was targeted only of the primary causes. Correcting these should automatically resolve the secondary issues.
The lab discussed the efficacy of botox and illustrated how its most dramatic effects were apparent when there was a high degree of dynamic spasticity involved. As most hemiplegia involves static spasticity, botox can be ineffective and casts are more suitable. Diplegia is normally associated with dynamic spasticity, and botox is often more effective in this scenario. The effects of botox were shown to have gone by 6 months. Use of botox was an aid in keeping a child in good shape until the age of around 8-10 years when one- time multilevel-surgery could be performed.

Sue Stott from the Auckland Medical School gave a presentation on the efficacy and monitoring of disabled children, out of the laboratory and in their normal environment. It was good to see New Zealand represented in the speaker. Getting good data to follow the progress of children in the community was fascinating. An interesting aspect was the uptime of children. the standard child population had an uptime (vertical/standing) time of 5.6hrs/day, children with hemiplegia was similar at 5.1hrs, diplegia dropped to 2.5hrs and quadraplegia to 0.5hrs.

CP Register
A presentation was given on the CP register in Australia. Some of the interesting statistics to come from this were:
2-2.5 births per 1000 had some degree of CP
12% acquired CP after birth
On register 34% have hemiplegia, 29% Diplegia, 23% Quadraplegia and the remainder with other forms.
The severity was- mild 50%, moderate 22% and severe 26%
People with CP that had visual impairment 49%, hearing impairment 10%, Intellectual impairment 48%, epilepsy 30%
Of the 6000 people presumed to have CP in Queensland, The CP League of Qld only knew of 30% of them.

I shall report on the rest of the conference in the next few weeks so stay posted and visit the website weekly!

Cheers - Harvey Brunt