LIFE EXPECTANCY OF CHILDREN WITH CEREBRAL-PALSY

Risk factors for mortality of young children with cerebral palsy were studied using a sample of 12,709 children aged 0.5-3.5 years with cere bral palsy who had received services from the State of California betw een 1980 and 1995. The most powerful prognostic factors for survival w ere simple functional items: mobility and feeding skills. Once these w ere known, factors such as severity of mental retardation and presence of quadriplegia contributed relatively little. Children with fair mot or and eating skills had good survival prospects, with 90% or more rea ching adulthood, but those without such skills had much poorer prospec ts. Among children who were unable to lift their heads, median surviva l time was 7 additional years for those who were tube fed (n = 557) an d 14 years for those fed entirely by others (n = 997). Although a chil d's approximate survival chances can be assessed from such functional classifications, we indicate the manner in which additional informatio n on the child's condition can be used to obtain more accurate surviva l data. (C) 1998 by Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.