The Cerebral Palsy Research Network is happy to announce that St. Louis Children’s Hospital and Washington University in St. Louis have joined our network. Toni Pearson, MD, Medical Director of the Cerebral Palsy Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital and her colleague Bhooma Aravamuthan, MD, DPhil, will lead both institutions in the participation in network research and quality improvement activities. St. Louis Children’s Hospital (SLCH) is a tertiary-care (a hospital that is highly specialized) children’s hospital affiliated with Washington University in St. Louis, and is the largest pediatric referral center in Missouri and the surrounding region.

The SLCH Cerebral Palsy (CP) Center is based in the Division of Pediatric and Developmental Neurology, and treats approximately 800 unique patients annually. The CP center cares for a diverse range of patients with childhood-onset conditions associated with motor impairment, including cerebral palsy as well as varied genetic, metabolic, and neurodegenerative conditions.

The core interdisciplinary CP clinical team is composed of 4 pediatric neurologists with subspecialty training in movement disorders, 2 pediatric physical medicine and rehabilitation physicians, physical therapists, an occupational therapist, a social worker, a nurse practitioner, and a nurse coordinator.

The CP Center works in collaboration with the Neurosurgery Center for Cerebral Palsy Spasticity (directed by Dr. T.S. Park), as well as colleagues in Orthopedic Surgery, the SLCH Pediatric Complex Care Clinic, and the Neonatal Neurology Clinic, to coordinate care for children with CP from infancy through adulthood.

CP Center faculty are engaged in research projects on the pathophysiology and clinical characterization of dystonia following perinatal brain injury, pediatric deep brain stimulation for genetic and acquired dystonia, and the clinical characterization and natural history of rare neurogenetic developmental motor disorders.