CP, otherwise known as cerebral palsy, presents most commonly in infant or toddlers, and in the earliest stages in children ages one (0) to three (3) years of age, cerebral palsy commonly manifests as the inability to coordinate effective balance, movement, and motor skills during essential early developmental years for an infant or child. As a neurologic condition, the immediate damage to an infant’s brain is not progressively worsening over time, however, associated symptoms stemming from the original brain damages appear incessantly in the lives of cerebral palsy patients, including:
- Primary conditions immediately impacting for the duration of their lives following the development of cerebral palsy include universal motor skill impairment, muscle atrophy, and speech difficulties as the direct and immediate result of the cerebral palsy.
- Secondary conditions also develop and likely worsen over the life of a cerebral palsy patient as the direct result of the initial brain damage, including nutritional, respiratory, and oral movement complications during attempts at feeding.
- Associative conditions frequently seen in part in most cerebral palsy patients, but the complications are not directly linked to the cerebral palsy damage itself. These associative conditions include vision, auditory, tactile sense loss, cognitive problems, and signs of learning disabilities
- Co-mitigating is the fourth of the lifelong medical complications clustering around a cerebral palsy diagnosis, with these ostensibly entirely unrelated conditions manifesting disproportionately in cerebral palsy patients including autism and attention deficit type diagnosis alongside the medical issues of cerebral palsy
Again, the permanent and progressively worsening nature of many of these complications, if present in a child with cerebral palsy, require extensive and constant supervision, medical observation, ongoing therapy, and large fiscal expenditures related to practical items such as mobility devices and treatment. For this reason, viable cerebral palsy lawsuits regularly result in multi-million dollar settlements or damage awards.
Damages Relevant to a CP Lawsuit
Viable damage claims in a CP lawsuit would be any expenses, whether past, current, or expected future over the course of the entire lifespan of the child, related to the cerebral palsy condition. Given the life-consuming nature of cerebral palsy for both patients and parents, the investment is significant from the outset and continues to be throughout a patient’s life. Claims for damages that are economic in nature are subject to perhaps less variability than are those claims related to non-economic losses, and potentially punitive damages in cases in certain jurisdictions. However, any lawsuit filing, especially relating to a relatively uncommon neurologic disorder, requires expert medical assessments of injuries, expected future possibilities for recovery, and expected future medical complications in light of the existing cerebral palsy. With a documented basis in this manner, claims cases become immediately more viable, and result in higher rates of verdicts favoring a plaintiff alongside higher payout values from damage awards in these cases.
Symptomology and Future Capacity of Plaintiff Necessary to Even Prove the Presence of Cerebral Palsy
Symptoms can be either minor or severe enough to require a lifetime of care, which is an expense and total redirection of a family unit’s lifestyle to caring for a cerebral palsy patient for at least one or both parent, as the costs related to caring for a cerebral palsy infant are egregiously high, with modern figures placed lifetime expenses as a case of a child with cerebral palsy over a non-afflicted peer stands at an additional one (1) million dollars in excess of the requirements for other children. However, rarely can a physician accurately estimate the potential functional, cognitive, linguistic, or social abilities of an infant moving into the future, and in many cases, ample developments in the treatment and management of cerebral palsy has expanded a normal patient’s life by decades in some cases. In this sense, legal guardians are best served by working in conjunction with medial professional and legal counsel to prepare a cerebral palsy lawsuit on behalf of families and their child with cerebral palsy.
While the cerebral palsy itself is merely the long-standing impact of a prior neurological injury to the child’s brain causing brain damage that later causes atrophy, musculoskeletal malformations, ocular complications, mobility equipment, and likely, multiple surgical procedures in the future, which control related the ability of a patient to clear their lungs, are all potential to probable viable claims for damages pending case-specific considerations of a given cerebral palsy lawsuit in light of applicable state or federal laws.
Causes of Cerebral Palsy Remain Unclear to the Medical Community
The most popular and contemporarily understood medical theory on the causes of cerebral palsy hold that cerebral palsy damages are most likely linked to some form of oxygen deprivation in the brain, causing permanent neurological damage to the infant’s brain capacity during the birth process. However, when even the medical community lacks consensus on the causes of cerebral palsy, with a minority percentage of even older patients appearing with cerebral palsy symptoms despite a history totally void of any hypoxic or anoxic event, clear answers and hopes for a cure remain well into the future.
For Parent’s Suspecting a Possible Birth Injury in Their Child
Cerebral palsy is a neurological disorder or deficiency that researchers have historically considered to be most likely caused by incidents of hypoxia or anoxia, whether in utero, during the birth process, or shortly thereafter. Generally taking as a long as two (2) to three (3) years to emerge as a condition once the toddler has consistently missed certain development goals and usually under physician’s observation as well, as suspected cerebral palsy cases can be viewed externally. However, numerous lawsuits are filed each year related to cerebral palsy conditions, as nearly ten thousand (10,000) new cerebral palsy cases in infants or toddlers develop annually, and an additional seven hundred and sixty-four thousand (764,000) cerebral palsy adult patients and adolescent patients live across the United States. Monitoring children during the ages one (1) to three (3) is critical for assessing and attempting to mitigate the development of cerebral palsy symptoms in young patients.
References:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/cp/facts.html
http://jcn.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/09/01/0883073814543306.full
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25183322
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1046/j.1471-0528.2003.02095.x/abstract