10 ms·

Honest question...what specifically about Cerebral palsy would cause death at an early age (27 is early to die in modern times, IMHO)?

myth_drannon 5y ago
Too many to list. But by the photos of it looks like it was severe, when the body is not able to move you get all kinds of chronic diseases. I think I read somewhere that pneumonia is number one because of the difficulty of eating and drinking and the food or liquids constantly get into the lungs.
chemeng 5y ago
Depends on the severity of the condition, but if swallow is affected I believe aspiration, pneumonia, choking, are causes of premature death for CP.
- johntiger1 5y ago
  it sucks but when the underlying condition is so severe, something trivial/mundane and preventable in a healthy person is usually cause of death
HideousKojima 5y ago
Can't speak to palsy but I had a friend with muscular dystrophy who passed in his late 20's. He couldn't swallow his own spit, and every 10 minutes or so I (or his attending nurse, or whoever he was spending time with) would need to help him drain it. He had the same sort of little vacuum that your dentist uses to get water out of your mouth during a cleaning or filling. I moved out of my hometown a few years before he passed so I don't know all the details, but I'm pretty sure his death had to do with respitory issues caused by his weakened muscles.
- trhway 5y ago
  speaking as total layman wrt. medicine, i wonder whether it is possible to at least improve the condition a bit by implanting electrodes and triggering the needed muscle(s) similar to say pacemakers.
  - 1adam1200 5y ago
    In diseases like muscular dystrophy there are no muscles to stimulate.
    - HideousKojima 5y ago
      There are still muscles, they slowly deteriorate over time though. When my friend was in 2nd grade or so he could still run and play with the other kids. For a few years after that he could still use a controller to play video games. As he deteriorated further, he couldn't even do that, and got most of his enjoyment from watching other people play games. Heartbreakingly his nephew, who was named after my friend, also suffers from muscular dystrophy since it's a genetic illness.
      - 1adam1200 5y ago
        I'm sorry you're friend went through that. I'm also sorry because I should have been more succinct. You are correct. I, too, have a form of muscular dystrophy called Spinal Muscular Atrophy, type II. I deal with a lot of what's being discussed here, i.e. aspiration pneumonia. That said, there is, at least in my mind, almost no functional difference between not having a muscle and having muscle so deteriorated that it no longer works. Electrical stimuli such as through a TENS unit does nothing. Back to OPs suggestion though. You might be able to make a case for early onset muscle assist? Dunno, just spit-ballin'. There
  - Calavar 5y ago
    I am a physician, though not a specialist in that particular area (otolaryngology). A healthy heart contracts exactly the same way (nearly) every time. There is a single electrical tree that coordinates the entire heart, so if you shock the tree at the right point, it will propagate down the entire tree in a predictable pattern and you get normal heart contraction "for free" The throat is orders of magnitude more complicated. There are several major muscles involved in swallowing, each of which can have tens to hundreds of thousands of individual fibers, each with their own innervation. Coordinating all these fibers to produce a single coherent motion is complex and is not fire and forget - it involves some pretty intricate feedback loops between processing centers in the brain and stretch receptors in the muscle, with the brain refining and redirecting movements based on updated data from the stretch receptors. It's like the sending a single strong electrical pulse to your lightbulb versus a CPU. It will probably do what you expect for the lightbulb (heart), but not for the CPU (throat).
cardine 5y ago
My older brother (currently 31) has severe cerebral palsy - very similar to what Zain had. He has been healthy recently, but there have been many close calls. He has frequent seizures and many normally routine things can be life threatening. Others have mentioned things like pneumonia. He requires 24/7 medical attention, including a nurse who stays with him every night in case, among other things, his seizures get out of control. Thankfully for him, my mom is a nurse and we are fortunate that health insurance covers a very large amount of his medically necessary care.

myth_drannon 5y ago

Too many to list. But by the photos of it looks like it was severe, when the body is not able to move you get all kinds of chronic diseases. I think I read somewhere that pneumonia is number one because of the difficulty of eating and drinking and the food or liquids constantly get into the lungs.

chemeng 5y ago

Depends on the severity of the condition, but if swallow is affected I believe aspiration, pneumonia, choking, are causes of premature death for CP.

johntiger1 5y ago
it sucks but when the underlying condition is so severe, something trivial/mundane and preventable in a healthy person is usually cause of death

HideousKojima 5y ago

Can't speak to palsy but I had a friend with muscular dystrophy who passed in his late 20's. He couldn't swallow his own spit, and every 10 minutes or so I (or his attending nurse, or whoever he was spending time with) would need to help him drain it. He had the same sort of little vacuum that your dentist uses to get water out of your mouth during a cleaning or filling. I moved out of my hometown a few years before he passed so I don't know all the details, but I'm pretty sure his death had to do with respitory issues caused by his weakened muscles.

trhway 5y ago
speaking as total layman wrt. medicine, i wonder whether it is possible to at least improve the condition a bit by implanting electrodes and triggering the needed muscle(s) similar to say pacemakers.
- 1adam1200 5y ago
  In diseases like muscular dystrophy there are no muscles to stimulate.
  - HideousKojima 5y ago
    There are still muscles, they slowly deteriorate over time though. When my friend was in 2nd grade or so he could still run and play with the other kids. For a few years after that he could still use a controller to play video games. As he deteriorated further, he couldn't even do that, and got most of his enjoyment from watching other people play games. Heartbreakingly his nephew, who was named after my friend, also suffers from muscular dystrophy since it's a genetic illness.
    - 1adam1200 5y ago
      I'm sorry you're friend went through that. I'm also sorry because I should have been more succinct. You are correct. I, too, have a form of muscular dystrophy called Spinal Muscular Atrophy, type II. I deal with a lot of what's being discussed here, i.e. aspiration pneumonia. That said, there is, at least in my mind, almost no functional difference between not having a muscle and having muscle so deteriorated that it no longer works. Electrical stimuli such as through a TENS unit does nothing. Back to OPs suggestion though. You might be able to make a case for early onset muscle assist? Dunno, just spit-ballin'. There
- Calavar 5y ago
  I am a physician, though not a specialist in that particular area (otolaryngology). A healthy heart contracts exactly the same way (nearly) every time. There is a single electrical tree that coordinates the entire heart, so if you shock the tree at the right point, it will propagate down the entire tree in a predictable pattern and you get normal heart contraction "for free" The throat is orders of magnitude more complicated. There are several major muscles involved in swallowing, each of which can have tens to hundreds of thousands of individual fibers, each with their own innervation. Coordinating all these fibers to produce a single coherent motion is complex and is not fire and forget - it involves some pretty intricate feedback loops between processing centers in the brain and stretch receptors in the muscle, with the brain refining and redirecting movements based on updated data from the stretch receptors. It's like the sending a single strong electrical pulse to your lightbulb versus a CPU. It will probably do what you expect for the lightbulb (heart), but not for the CPU (throat).

cardine 5y ago

My older brother (currently 31) has severe cerebral palsy - very similar to what Zain had. He has been healthy recently, but there have been many close calls. He has frequent seizures and many normally routine things can be life threatening. Others have mentioned things like pneumonia. He requires 24/7 medical attention, including a nurse who stays with him every night in case, among other things, his seizures get out of control. Thankfully for him, my mom is a nurse and we are fortunate that health insurance covers a very large amount of his medically necessary care.