Visual evoked potential in children with spastic cerebral palsy

Abstract EN

Background : Cerebral palsy is a group of non-progressive neurological disorders appearing in infancy or early childhood which permanently affect body movements and muscle coordination.

It is due to abnormal development of the cerebral motor cortex during fetal growth or due to brain injury either before, during or after birth.

Spastic cerebral palsy being the most prevalent of its various forms.

There is scanty information about the neurophysiologic investigations in children diagnosed as having spastic cerebral palsy.

Aims : To investigate the relationship between abnormal visual evoked potential findings with different clinical parameters in children with spastic cerebral palsy.

Patients and Methods : Twenty four children with spastic cerebral palsy in the age range 1 to 10 years participated in this study.

Evaluation of visual evoked potentials, were performed in all study patients as well as 24 healthy children as controls.

Results : A significant difference was found in the visual evoked potential latencies and amplitudes between the children with cerebral palsy and controls.

Abnormal visual evoked potentials in children with bilateral spastic cerebral palsy demonstrated a correlation with the presence of moderate to severe developmental delay.

Conclusions : It is concluded that visual evoked potentials of the patient group revealed a marked differences with that of the control group and that it demonstrate a statistically significant correlation with the presence of neurological deficits.

Further to conclude, since visual evoked potentials s is non-invasive neurophysiological investigations ; they can serve as important tool in the diagnostic work up of spastic cerebral palsy.

Abbreviations : VEP-visual evoked potential, CP-cerebral palsy.