United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

My 8 year old daughter has an LOBPI. She has struggled with the obvious sensory things in addition to her injury but at about age 5 also developed a verbal tic and has now progressed to some OCD behaviors. We saw a neurologist a while back who suggested we run an MRI to assess if any portion(s) of her brain suffered damge during her delivery. Just curious if anyone has ever done this, or been recommended to do this, and if it was worthwhile. Its expensive to run the MRI being that she'll have to be under general anesthesia. Is it common for BPI kids to have endured some type of brain damage due to lack of oxygen and/or force during delivery? She is otherwise on track developmentally and academically and has received no surgery to date for her injury. Thanks for your help!

My son had a CT scan done on his brain at 18 mos. old. Not as accurate and detailed as an MRI and so I kinda wish our Pediatrician had referrred us for an MRI scan (I think she didn't want him under the anesthesia because he was getting ready to have the muscle/tendon surgery a couple weeks after the scan). Oh well, anyway, his CT scan came back clean (which we were thankful for)... he had been without oxygen for quite a bit and needed rescusitated and oxygen). He was sooo slow in his development (which I know can be normal for bpis, but this was even slower) and he had a lot of eating issues (he didn't learn to chew anything more than pureed food without gagging and vomiting until around 17 mos. old). Stuff like that.

In my opinion, it was worth the cost of the CT scan to know if we were dealing with something like mild CP or whatnot. At least you know what you are working with then!

He has sensory issues now, not just with Lefty; but his whole body. Sensory Processing Disorder. When they realized that, it was nice to know what things we can do to work with him! I guess it can be brought on by a traumatic birth so that explains that! haha.

Good luck with the MRI. That would be a good question to ask your daughter's BP Center (about whether or not it's very common to have brain damage). They see more numbers of BP children than we do.

were going through the same stuff now. im so confused. were dealing with sensory processing, body awarenss, body in space issues, depth perception. so were kinda wondering the same thing..were not sure. would love to chat more about this with you. our son is almost four now with right erb's palsy.