Causes of Infant Stroke

According to CHASA, there are more than 100 causes of strokes in infants and children. These can be caused by things ranging from congenital heart disease, hematological disorders, vascular disorders, sickle cell disease, metabolic disease and an infection while the child has chicken pox. Unfortunately, more than 10% of children who have a stroke will never learn the cause of their stroke.

Signs of a stroke in an infant

Strokes in infants can be difficult to diagnose. A baby can't tell you what's wrong or if something feels weird or hurts. Most infants aren't diagnosed until they show developmental delays or an early hand preference. My niece was lucky. She was diagnosed quite early.

Here are a few of the signs of a pediatric stroke

• Seizures on one side of the body
• Apnea
• Early hand preference (before 10months)
• Poor feeding
• Gross motor development delays
• Restricted movement in arms and legs
• Delays in language development

In older children, symptoms include seizures or sudden paralysis of one side of the body.

All of this information can be found on the CHASA Website and on Kids Have Strokes.

Can you tie your shoe with one hand?

Survivors of strokes often have limited or no use of one hand. They have to learn to adapt to do things that most of us take for granted.

When I was in college, I had a brace on my left hand for several months. Although I am right-handed, I never realized how many things I could not do because of the brace. I can only imagine the things for which a stroke victim has to learn to compensate. A simple act of tying one's shoe is made much more difficult when you only have one hand.

Here is a video I found of a child tying a shoe with one hand and limited use of the other hand.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0CJxc5MKlVk

Why don't you try to do a few things with just one hand today?

Kids have strokes, too

When I was 9 years old, my grandmother had a stroke. I thought strokes were something that only happened to older people. Unfortunately, I learned differently in 2009.

According to CHASA, 1 in 4000 babies will have a stroke before they are a month old and 11 out of 100,000 children will have a stroke before their 18th birthday. Somewhere between 20-40% of those strokes are fatal. Strokes are more common in boys than in girls. Those numbers are shocking to me.

Just my little tidbit about pediatric strokes today in honor of my niece and to help create awareness for the condition.