Assessing innovative intervention for children with cerebral palsy

Five-year-old Lauren's cerebral palsy used to make eating meals an ordeal, going to bed a challenge, and crawling an impossibility.

But her new baclofen pump implant helps loosen and tone her muscles, making daily activities much easier to manage for Lauren and her family.

"She can crawl upstairs now, allowing my 71-year-old mother... to be able to safely get Lauren upstairs and to bed," says Lauren's mother, Sandy Tierney. "She sleeps better, naps less and is happier now that her body is more predictable and responds to her."

Benedict

Lauren and her parents have been participating in occupational therapy professor Ruth Benedict's ongoing study to measure the functional effects of the baclofen pump for children with cerebral palsy (CP).

Compared to injections and pills that wore off or caused fatigue, the pump's slow and measured release of baclofen a drug derived from a mammalian neurotransmitter acid gives Lauren the consistent muscle tone she needs to go about her life more comfortably and quickly.

"I don't have to take the pill any more, and then I can have breakfast quicker," Lauren says, as relayed by her mother. "It helps me get up the stairs more easily, and I'm not so tight."

Benedict is studying how the pump and subsequent therapies affect functioning, care, health, well being and participation in home and community life for clients with CP as well as their caregivers.

Health care providers are putting a lot of resources into supporting children who receive these interventions, so knowing that it is effective is imperative, Benedict says.

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Assessing innovative intervention for children with cerebral palsy