Beijing, China's Tiantan Puhua Neurosurgical Hospital is doing wonders for people with cerebral palsy with a new breakthrough in treatment that involves stem cells.
Recently, doctors at Tiantan Puhua treated a 19-year-old cerebral palsy patient from Hungary. After undergoing the hospital's cerebral palsy treatment, which involves injecting stem cells into spinal cord fluid, the patient has seen vast improvements, from being able to sit up to concentrating for a longer amount of time.
Neither a disorder nor a disease, cerebral palsy describes a group of chronic conditions that make body movement and muscle coordination difficult. Different types of cerebral palsy exist, like Spastic Cerebral Palsy, Athetoid or Dyskinetic Cerebral Palsy, Ataxic Cerebral Palsy and Mixed Cerebral Palsy. No type of cerebral palsy is contagious, and it is typically caused when damage occurs to specific areas of the brain during fetal development or infancy.
No doubt, when a British family got word of the breakthrough in China, they thought of their eight-year-old daughter, who suffers from cerebral palsy. Since the cerebral palsy treatment is not available in England, the parents must raise enough money to be able to send their daughter to China in hopes that her health will improve.
The cerebral palsy treatment used at Beijing's Tiantan Puhua Neurosurgical Hospital isn't exclusive to the country in fact, it's been used in a few other countries like Mexico where patient results have been dramatic. Living with cerebral palsy for some people means not being able to see, having difficulty speaking and even having trouble walking, to name a few examples, but patients who get this stem cell injection have reported an almost reversal of many of the effects of cerebral palsy. Children with cerebral palsy especially can benefit from this treatment, since it may enable them to lead a more "normal" life like other children. The impact of cerebral palsy on children can be huge.
While this British family keeps faith that their daughter will be able to walk, talk and get out of her wheelchair after the cerebral palsy treatment in China, many other families around the globe remain hopeful that their loved ones who suffer from cerebral palsy will be able to be helped as well. Sadly, many suffer cerebral palsy as a result of faulty equipment rather than simply because of problems in the muscles or nerves. Medical malpractice can leave a family damaged for life, with effects of the mistreatment often irreversible
