Botox Treatment for Cerebral Palsy
Believe it or not, you can use Botox treatment for cerebral palsy as a way of helping the muscles in the body. In particular, doctors have found it helpful for treating the spastic or dystonia birth injury. It works because of how it lowers the amount of over activity in the muscles and reduces stiffness. Not only does it help to improve the movement of the child, it can help with lowering the amount of pain that your child experiences from cerebral palsy.
Understanding Botox
Basically, Botox uses the same bacteria that causes food poisoning and botulism. This prescription drug has become similar to other products that use different names like Dyspot, Myobloc and Xeomin. They administer this drug through injections to the muscles, and the goal behind this is to paralyze or weaken them. Nevertheless, when it comes to treating muscle spasms, it can unfortunately take as many as 100 injections for it to prove effective. In most cases, one injection will last for six months.
Along with treating cerebral palsy, they have approved this drug for other treatments like:
- Misaligned eyes
- Uncontrollable blinking
- Overactive bladder
- Extreme migraines
- Severe underarm sweating
Giving Greater Independence
Botox treatment for cerebral palsy has been found to give many of the children suffering from CP to have the ability to do things that they couldn’t do before. For example, they might turn on the faucet, pick up a pen or feed themselves. Any child that suffers from CP will struggle with these things. While surgery has been shown to help, some doctors prefer to try Botox because of how the pain will be minimal with this injection.
When Might a Doctor Prescribe This Treatment?
Many times, doctors saw how when children were given this form of treatment before the age of five, it had the most successful results. They saw a rapid change and improvement in the child’s health. Most often, this birth disorder will have the most negative effect on children between the ages of two and four. This is normally the time frame where doctors will diagnose this condition. That’s because you can sometimes struggle to make an accurate diagnosis of it until the child has reached between two and four years old. In general, doctors will typically diagnose this condition at 18 months.
Many doctors still look at using Botox as an experimental treatment for CP. While it remains experimental, doctors have been using this form of treatment for CP for 20 years. Some doctors have found that when Botox treatment begins almost right away, children will be walking independently at 20 years old in most cases. However, no treatment will prove 100 percent effective, and while some have had great results with this, not everyone will. Early treatment tends to have more positive results, but the one thing that you have to remember about this birth injury is that it lasts for a lifetime.