Blood taken from the umbilical cord may help some cerebral palsy sufferers to get some relief from the worst of their symptoms.
According to an article from ABC Los Angeles, one LA area family was relieved that they decided to bank their child’s umbilical cord after it was determined that he had cerebral palsy.
Time Sensitive Procedure
Treating Cerebral Palsy with Cord Blood
The treatment involves infusing the child with their own stem cells, which physicians already know can decrease inflammation. There is also evidence to support the ability of cord blood to stimulate the growth of new brain cells and to fix damaged cells, according to the article.
Using cord blood is only one of the new treatments available for children with cerebral palsy, and it’s not available to children of all ages. A study is being conducted at Duke University at present, but only children between one and six years of age are included and the child’s cord blood must be available.
Brain Injuries and Treatments
Unless there are significant advances in medical science, there is unlikely to ever be a cure for cerebral palsy. What physicians are increasingly able to do, however, is to alleviate the worst of the symptoms so that people with Cerebral Palsy can lead more normal lives.
Procedures such as the one involving cord blood can be given to children who are very young and, in this particular case, the treatments are more likely to be successful in children who are very young.
While cord blood may be able to encourage a bit of new growth in the brain, most brain injuries cannot heal. Unfortunately, the one organ in our body central to just about everything we are cannot heal itself and, because of that fact, people who suffer brain injuries of any type – including those that cause cerebral palsy – generally must live with the condition for the rest of their lives. In some cases, they are able to overcome the worst aspects of their conditions but, in many cases, cerebral palsy is severe enough that the people affected with it are more or less completely dependent upon others to get by.
Costly Help
Seeking medical assistance to help the child with the symptoms of cerebral palsy can be a very expensive proposition. It can also be traumatic for the child. In cases where parents sue for medical negligence related to the cerebral palsy that their child suffers with, damages for both medical treatments and for pain and suffering on the part of the child are oftentimes added to the award sought.