Surgical Treatment of Wrist and Hand Deformity in Children with Cerebral Palsy

Cerebral palsy (CP) is a complex disorder resulting from injury to developing brain. It involves multimodal and multidisciplinary approach that involves various disciplines of medical science. The entire focus of this approach is to provide patients with this disorder the best quality of life. Although CP can affect both upper and lower limbs, the functional expectation of upper limb is much higher and complex. This implies particularly to hand and wrist based on complex functional movements expected of them. This puts orthopaedic surgeons in a unique position in managing these patients. It is worth mentioning here that it is not about offering them a surgical intervention the emphasis should lie on the entire process of selection, evaluation, and intervention. All these steps need to be considered very thoroughly so that the best outcome is achieved based on patients' expectation at present and keeping the future consideration in mind as well. This paper focuses only on children with hand and wrist deformity. Although children have a great healing potential, but they have high functional demand and longer-life expectancy in general so getting things right for the first time should be of paramount importance. This paper tries to address this issue by reviewing the literature to help orthopaedic surgeons in developing an algorithm in their mind when offering intervention. The consideration of inclusion and exclusion criteria along with review of literature has been considered with this background in mind. This paper primarily addresses the surgical aspect of disease and steps that are critical in this regard. Follow up planning, long-term outcome, rehabilitation planning, use of conservative treatment has not been considered in this review.