Children with cerebral palsy can get advice from the top specialists in the country at the St Petersburg University Clinic

The St Petersburg University Pirogov Clinic of High Medical Technologies

The concilium for patients diagnosed with cerebral palsy, which is held in Paediatric Traumatology Department No 3 at the St Petersburg University Clinic, is second to none in Russia. During this comprehensive, multidimensional examination, patients and their parents are able to receive consultations simultaneously with a paediatrician, a neurologist, an orthopaedist-traumatologist, a nutritionist, a urologist, an ophthalmologist, a clinical psychologist, and a specialist in assistive rehabilitation equipment (standing frames, wheelchairs, braces, orthoses).

During the concilium, the doctors assess whether the patient needs surgery and what risks it may lead to, or whether they can limit themselves to non-operative treatment. They also choose an individual programme for each patient and plan the routing of diagnostic, therapeutic and prophylactic measures. The specialist in assistive rehabilitation equipment helps select what exactly they will need and explains how to properly register for it and receive it free of charge from the government.

It is important that in the early stages of the examination the physicians may identify a hereditary disease that is hiding behind the symptoms of cerebral palsy. This significantly affects the tactics that will be used in treating the child. The sooner the correct diagnosis is arrived at, the more favourable the prognosis of treatment.

The St Petersburg University Clinic brings in specialists from other leading medical centres of the country to participate in such consultations. At a recent concilium, the team of physicians that examined the patients included a geneticist from the Research Institute of Paediatrics and Children’s Health of the Central Clinical Hospital of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Anyone who has faced this problem knows that once a patient reaches the age of majority, they often have trouble finding a place where they can be treated. So, the Clinic receives not only children but also adult patients with infantile cerebral palsy. There is absolutely no age limit at the St Petersburg University Clinic. A patient can be seen on a regular basis — routine check-ups are usually scheduled once every six months or once a year.

Stanislav Ivanov, Project Manager, a physician and an orthopaedist-traumatologist

Cerebral palsy is one of the most common causes of childhood disability in developed countries. Children with this disease require constant assistance and care. There are at present no specific methods of treating patients that will reverse the damage to the brain, but there are ways of improving the quality of their lives — neurorehabilitation, functional orthopaedic surgery, and drug therapy aimed at limiting the damage. To make an appointment for a consultation with the specialists at the St Petersburg University Pirogov Clinic of High Medical Technologies, you can call the receptionist of Traumatology Department No 3 at +7 968 598-27-75 (weekdays from 9am until 5pm). There is a waiting list for first-time patients at the Clinic that needs to be treated with understanding. Owing to the high workload of the physicians, consultations cannot be held more frequently than once a month.