Abstract
Aims This study aims to describe and compare goals and methods, characteristics of children
with cerebral palsy (CP), and to compare prevalence of CP in the Surveillance of Cerebral
Palsy in Europe (SCPE) and the Australian Cerebral Palsy Register (ACPR).
Methods This study compares the objectives of the two networks and their working practices;
key documents from both above-mentioned networks were used. Children included in the
comparison of the descriptive profile and prevalence measures were born between 1993
and 2009 for Australian data and between 1980 and 2003 for SCPE.
Results SCPE contributed 10,756 cases and ACPR 6,803. There were similar distributions of
motor type, severity, and gestational age groups, except for the proportion of the
lowest gestational age category (range, 20–27 weeks) which was twice higher in the
ACPR (13 vs. 7%). Associated impairment proportions were also similar except for severe
vision impairment which was more than twice as high in SCPE as in the ACPR (11 vs.
4%), but most likely due to a subtle difference in definitions. Prevalence rates were
comparable at the same time point in the different groups of birth weight, and declined
over time, except for the moderately low birth weight in ACPR.
Conclusion Two CP networks representing two continents have compared their major characteristics
to facilitate the comparison across their study populations. These characteristics
proved to be similar with only marginal differences. This gives additional strength
to the observation in both networks that CP prevalence is decreasing which is of great
importance for families and health care systems.
Keywords
cerebral palsy - epidemiology - registers - prevalence
