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Prevalence of Cerebral Palsy in Indian Children: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

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Abstract

Objective

To determine the pooled-prevalence of cerebral palsy in Indian children.

Methods

The authors searched the published literature from different databases (PubMed, Ovid SP and EMBASE) and also tried to acquire information from the unpublished literature about the prevalence of cerebral palsy. They screened prospective/retrospective, cross-sectional, and cohort studies of children with cerebral palsy in the Indian population. Data were extracted from the included studies, and quality assessment was performed. Data were analysed using STATA MP12 (Texas, College Station).

Results

Of the 862 publications searched, eight studies were qualified and included for quantitative analysis. The overall pooled prevalence of cerebral palsy per 1000 children surveyed was 2.95 (95% CI 2.03–3.88). Sub-group analysis for rural, urban and mixed rural-urban study population demonstrated the pooled prevalence as 1.83 (95% CI 0.41–3.25), 2.29 (95% CI 1.43–3.16) and 4.37 (95% CI 2.24–6.51) respectively.

Conclusions

This systematic review observed a paucity of high-quality, prevalence studies of cerebral palsy in India, which is a limitation to estimate the inferences for a national estimate. The observed prevalence of cerebral palsy in India is near similar to global estimates. There is a need to re-allocate resources and revisit the implementation of the existing policies for the prevention and management of cerebral palsy, taking into account the current disease burden.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge ICMR Advanced Centre of Evidence Based Child Health, PGIMER, Chandigarh for supporting this systematic review.

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Author notes

    Authors and Affiliations

    1. Evidence Based Health Informatics Unit, Regional Resource Centre, Department of Telemedicine, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, India

      Anil Chauhan, Nishant Jaiswal, Amit Agarwal & Meenu Singh

    2. Department of Pediatrics, Postgraduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh, India

      Manvi Singh, Nishant Jaiswal, Jitendra Kumar Sahu & Meenu Singh

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    1. Anil Chauhan
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    2. Manvi Singh
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    3. Nishant Jaiswal
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    5. Jitendra Kumar Sahu
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    Contributions

    The titles and abstracts of all potential studies were screened by AC, JKS & MaS. Data were extracted from the included studies by AC, MaS, JKS & AA. AC & JKS assessed for quality of the included studies by using a quality assessment tool. NJ, AC & JKS did the data analysis using STATA MP12 (Texas, College Station). Discrepancies if any were resolved through discussion with MS. AC, MaS and JKS wrote the initial draft and the final draft was approved by all the authors. MS is the guarantor for this article.

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    Correspondence to Jitendra Kumar Sahu.

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    Source of Funding

    The study was supported by the Indian Council of Medical Research, New Delhi through Grant no: 5/7/592/11-RHN.

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    Anil Chauhan and Manvi Singh are equally responsible for the work described in this paper and share the first authorship

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    Anil Chauhan and Manvi Singh are equally responsible for the work described in this paper and share the first authorship

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    Chauhan, A., Singh, M., Jaiswal, N. et al. Prevalence of Cerebral Palsy in Indian Children: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Indian J Pediatr 86, 1124–1130 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12098-019-03024-0

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    • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12098-019-03024-0

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