The clinical grouping of skin reflexes in different forms of cerebral palsy

Previous studies in healthy infants and children showed the gradual disappearance of skin reflexes at specific times: distal skin reflexes disappeared early while trunk-dorsal reflexes disappeared later. In this study the same twenty-eight skin reflexes on the extremities and the trunk were examined in one hundred and thirty-three cerebral palsy patients aged from 1.3 to 18 years. Some of these reflexes persisted longer and were more intense than in healthy children. In spastic forms of cerebral palsy they were mainly the distal skin reflexes that persisted longer, while in the dyskinetic form longer persistence of trunk-dorsal reflexes and stronger abdominal reflexes were found. In the cerebellar form only very low persistence of distal reflexes was ascertained.