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

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literature from different databases (PubMed, Ovid SP and EMBASE) and also tried to acquire information from the unpublished literature about the prevalence of cerebral palsy.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.

Keywords: Cerebral palsy; Children; India; Prevalence; Systematic review.