Usefulness of Cerebral Palsy Curves in Mexican Patients: A Cross-Sectional Study

Cerebral palsy describes a group of movement and posture disorders that cause activity limitation, and are attributable to nonprogressive disorders that occur in the fetal or infant brain. The growth of these children should not be compared with those of the healthy population. We studied 452 children, 186 female and 266 male. We compared the results in 2 growth charts, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and cerebral palsy, and the results were statistically significant (P = .00001). With the CDC charts, 40.71% of the patients were below the 5th percentile and only 5.5% of them when we used the charts for cerebral palsy patients. The Mexican cerebral palsy patients were similar to US cerebral palsy patients when we compared height (P = .4075) and body mass index (BMI) (P = .4075). Only the weight was found to be different (P = .00001). All the correlation indexes were negative: Eating and Drinking Ability Classification System (EDACS)-BMI (rho = -0.4798) (P = .00001), Communication Function Classification System (CFCS)-BMI (rho = -0.4353) (P = .00001), and Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS)-BMI (rho = -0.3584) (P = .00001). The growth charts of the healthy pediatric population tend to overestimate the underweight. We propose to use cerebral palsy charts as a reference in our patients. It is possible to determine a functional profile (communication, gross motor function and safety, and feed efficiency) for the cerebral palsy population based on their BMI.