If its effects are severely disabling, resulting in very little physical activity for the person, social elements can also suffer. Workplace environments can also be limited, since most labor-intensive work requires basic physical agility that spastic diplegics may not possess. However, the degree of variability among individuals with spastic diplegia means that no greater or lesser degree of stigma or real-world limitation is standard. Lesser effects usually mean fewer physical limitations, better-quality exercise, and more real-world flexibility, but the person is still in general seen as different from the norm. How such a person chooses to react to outside opinion is of paramount importance when social factors are considered. Mechanism
Spastic diplegias particular type of brain damage inhibits the proper development of upper motor neuron function, impacting the motor cortex, the basal ganglia and the corticospinal tract. Nerve receptors in the spine leading to affected muscles become unable to properly absorb gamma amino butyric acid (GABA), the amino acid that regulates muscle tone in humans.
Phenol and similar chemical nerve deadeners, injected selectively into the over-firing nerves in the legs on the muscle end to reduce spasticity in their corresponding muscles by preventing the spasticity signals from reaching the legs; Phenol wears off every six months. Orthopedic surgery to release the spastic muscles from their hypertonic state, a usually temporary result because the spasticity source is the nerves, not the muscles; spasticity can fully reassert itself as little as one year post-surgery. Selective dorsal rhizotomy, a neurosurgery directly targeting and eliminating ("cutting" or "lesioning") the over-firing nerve rootlets and leaving the properly firing ones intact, thereby permanently eliminating the spasticity but compelling the person to spend months re-strengthening muscles that will have been severely weakened by the loss of the spasticity, due to the fact of those muscles not really having had actual strength to begin with. Prognosis
Unusually, cerebral palsy, including spastic cerebral palsy, is notable for a glaring overall research deficiency—the fact that it is one of the very few major groups of conditions on the planet in human beings for which medical science has not yet (as of 2011) collected wide-ranging empirical data on the development and experiences of young adults, the middle aged and older adults.