Perinatal events and cerebral palsy.

This review highlights recent studies that refute the following hypothesis on the genesis of cerebral palsy: The risk factors that cause death are also risk factors for brain damage resulting in cerebral palsy, if they occur at lower intensity, less frequently, or for a shorter duration. Untested, unproved, and invalid theories that emerged in the 1950s stimulated the assembly of much data that are at odds with the notion that the pathways of causation for cerebral palsy and perinatal mortality are identical.