The Spastic Forms of Cerebral Palsy

This textbook, the second edition following the first published in 2009, provides a comprehensive and detailed analysis of all spastic forms of cerebral palsy, examining each aspect of the condition from various perspectives, such as motor, perceptual, and emotional. In cerebral palsy rehabilitation, the therapeutic approach should begin with an evaluation of the child's resources and the strategies they employ to build their adaptive functions, despite their central and peripheral impairments. The use of a pre-established universal model of motor performance (the so-called typical motor development), ordered by an obligatory sequence acquired in rigid and constant progression (the so-called milestones), is no longer acceptable. Instead, it is crucial to analyze the cognitive and motor resources of the child with cerebral palsy, marked by the pathology regardless of any applied therapy, to plan a tailored rehabilitation program with the child and their family. This requires an understanding of how the child's brain responds to internal and external demands for adaptation. For this reason, it is necessary that the therapists acquire specific knowledge of the natural history of the form of cerebral palsy and its rules, to design and pursue the most effective adaptive changes (understood as stable and favorable modifications of the natural history) achievable in that specific case and specific physical, social and cultural context. This approach should not only consider motor re-education but also other therapeutic interventions, such as drugs, functional surgery, orthoses, aids, and adaptive modifications of the environment. This textbook, enriched by clinical cases and videos, will be of interest for those who already work in this field (doctors, child neuropsychiatrists and physiatrists, rehabilitation therapists), as well as for students of the first and second level degrees in the area of rehabilitation and specialization medical schools. In this second edition, all chapters have been updated and, in some cases fully rewritten. Moreover, in the new chapters the general concepts of CP re-education, the reasons that justify early treatment, the importance of the active role of family, the panorama of therapeutic tools, the description of combined treatment (re-education, drugs, orthotics, functional surgery )and of Assistive Technologies were added.