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Transient diplegia in children who fail to thrive
Author(s) -
YOUNG J. A.,
CRAIG M. A.
Publication year - 1991
Publication title -
child: care, health and development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.832
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1365-2214
pISSN - 0305-1862
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2214.1991.tb00688.x
Subject(s) - failure to thrive , diplegia , pediatrics , medicine , neglect , psychology , developmental psychology , cerebral palsy , physical medicine and rehabilitation , psychiatry
Summary We describe a group of eight children seen over a 4‐year period. After a few months of apparently normal health and development, the children developed feeding difficulty, failed to thrive and had mild diplegia. No other underlying pathology was demonstrated. After a period of careful attention to feeding in the stimulating environment of a child development centre, the feeding difficulty, developmental delay and diplegia all disappeared, but, by school age, the children showed learning or behavioural difficulty. It is suggested that these children suffered a subtle neurological insult during the intra‐uterine period and that this predisposed them to the neurological difficulty and failure to thrive. It is important to distinguish this small group of children from those in whom nonorganic failure to thrive is found and parental neglect is suspected.