A national program of collaborated study at Charity hospital and 14 other medical centers may answer the question of how premature birth, the predominant cause of cerebral palsy, brings about this crippling disease.
This view was expressed her Wednesday by Dr. Nicholson J Eastman, professor emeritus o Cfetetrics at John Hopkins university school of medicine Baltimore, Md.
Dr. Eastman, who has servec is president of the American Academy for Cerebral Palsy delivered the eighth annua Peter Graffagnino lecture ai the Louisiana State university school of medicine. His topic was "The Obstetrical Factors In the Etiology of Cerebral Palsy."
$4 MILLION STUDY
In an interview Dr. Eastman discussed a $4 million study at L5 medical centers to investigate the causes of cerebral palsy. This is a program of the National Institute of Neurological Diseases and Blindness, a part of the National Institute of Health.
This program, he said, was the best evidence of a huge surge of interest in cerebral palsy that has emerged since the development of the Salk vaccine and the reduction in the number of eases of polio. . Cerebral palsy results when a person suffers damage to the por tion of the brain that control muscular movements. It may beaccompanied by speech difficulties, deafness, mental retardation and blindness, he said.
Cerebral palsy is now the num fcer one crippler of children ir the nation, he said.
"Twenty thousand babies who are born each year will develop cerebral palsy," Dr. Eastman said.
.These children were a "source of heartache to the parents," he said.
PLACED ABOVE POLIO
"Relatively speaking, cerebral palsy more dam-
aged children today than is polio," he said.
Ninety per cent of the cases of cerebral palsy develop from something that happens between the time of conception and the end of the first post-natal week, Dr. Eastman said.
Somehow the child is injured he said. The word injured, he ex plained, was used in its broac sense to cover such factors as lack of oxygen and virus invasions.
In his address Dr. Eastman discussed a study of cerebral palsy that he and his co-workers are now conducting. It was begun July 1, 1957.
PRESENTS ANALYSIS He presented an analysis of
the obstetrical backgrounds of 500 cases of cerebral palsied children in a New York area. These were compared with the obstetrical background of 500 healthy, normal children born in the same lospital at the same time as the
cerebral palsied children. The complete study will include 750
ases, he said.
This study, he said, reaffirmed what was previously known, that the "great cause" of cerebral >alsy is prematurity.
The study also indicated the mportance of extreme prema-urity—children weighing three-nd-a-half pounds or less at birth —as a cause of cerebral palsy. Thirty-nine of the 500 palsied children were "extremely prema-ture." Only two of the normal ivere.
Another finding of the study vas the lack of correlation be-ween cerebral palsy and injuries suffered during difficult deliver-es.
INFREQUENT CAUSE "It used to be thought that obstetrical injuries from difficult forceps deliveries were a general cause of cerebral palsy," he said. 'Analysis of data shows clearly :hat obstetrical trauma is an infrequent cause."
This was due to the advancements in obstetrics, he said. Now, difficult deliveries are often handled by Caesarean operations, he said.
The big question now is to find in what way prematurity brings about cerebral palsy, he said.
Through the nationwide program in the medical centers, he aid, the answer may be found, "his program will provide detailed medical histories on the regnancy, birth and neo-natal eriods of about 40,000 births a ear. Some of these children, he said, will develop cerebral palsy. Then their records can be examined, he said.
At 8 a. m. Thursday Dr. Eastman will be a guest at the combined weekly obstetrics and gyneeology conferences of the LSU medical school and the Tulane university medical school in the Charity hospital amphitheater. At 9:30 a. m.,. he will meet with residents from the hospital. PHOTO: DR. NICHOLSON J. EASTMAN (center) presented the eighth annual Peter Graffagnini lecture Wednesday at the Louisiana State university school of medicine. He chats with Dr. Pjtejr JSiaffagnino (right), founder and professor emeri-tus ol the department of obstetrics and gyneeology at LSU, for whom the lecture is named, and Dr. Abe Mickal, professor and head of the department.
