Intellectual disability in cerebral palsy: a multifaceted epidemiology

Abstract

This commentary is on the original article by Reid et al. on pages 687–694 of this issue.

Life expectancy and its adjustment in cerebral palsy with severe impairment: Are we doing this right?

“…However, if changing the DISAB score to 8, which theoretically could be a 1-point change in IQ, and which is notoriously difficult to measure in such children, then the Western Australia data now suggests a life expectancy of 8 years+55 years 4 months = 63 years 4 months. The Victoria cohort was further reviewed regarding cognition, 28,29 finding that non-ambulant children, such as in the example above, born between 1981 and 2010 (n=3248) with an IQ <70, so including the current definition of mild intellectual impairment, only had a 44% chance of reaching 35 years; however, this included everyone from birth, not from 4 years, as in Brooks et al's data. 1 From the above example, given the life expectancy estimates now range from 35 to 63 years, it requires no imagination to realise which predicted outcome each side's lawyers would prefer.…”