Drooling in Children with Cerebral Palsy: A Narrative Review of the Current Management Landscape

Children with developmental or neurological disorders, such as cerebral palsy, present with impaired motor function, resulting in impaired swallowing, feeding, and drooling. The prevalence of chronic drooling radically changes from 0.5% in children >4 years to 60% in children with neurological ailments. Drooling can have a serious impact on the quality of life of affected children, which can create a sense of isolation and refusal by peers. In addition, drooling results in not only financial but also considerable emotional turmoil for caregivers of affected children, who are frequently confronted with difficulty managing the underlying neurological impairment of their child. In this narrative review, we expansively address, in addition to prevalence, causative factors, clinical manifestations, and impacts on quality of life, the current management landscape of drooling, which includes rehabilitation and conservative approaches, medical therapy (pharmacological management), and surgical management.