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- Disability Categories
- Autism
- Deaf-Blindness
- Deafness
- Emotional Behavioral Disorder
- Hearing Impairment or Deafness
- Cognitively Disabled
- Multiple Disabilities
- Orthopedic Impairment
- Other Health Impairment
- Specific Learning Disability
- Speech and Language Disability or Impairment
- Traumatic Brain Injury
- Visual Impairment and Blindness
Treatments
These are the many conditions related to multiple disabilities and their treatments:
Seizures
Seizures
- Vagus nerve stimulation. This therapy involves a device called a vagus nerve stimulator that's implanted underneath the skin of your chest like a heart pacemaker. Wires from the stimulator are wrapped around the vagus nerve in your neck. The battery-powered device delivers short bursts of electrical energy to the brain through the vagus nerve. It's not clear how this inhibits seizures, but the device can reduce seizures by 20 to 40 percent and completely control seizures in about 5 percent of people. Most people still need to take anti-epileptic medication. Side effects of vagus nerve stimulation include hoarseness, throat pain, coughing, shortness of breath, tingling and muscle pain.
- Ketogenic diet. Some children with epilepsy have been able to reduce their seizures by maintaining a strict diet that's high in fats and low in carbohydrates. This diet, called a ketogenic diet, causes the body to break down fats instead of carbohydrates for energy. Some children can go off the ketogenic diet after a few years and remain seizure-free.
- Shunt. The most common treatment for hydrocephalus is the surgical insertion of a drainage system, called a shunt. It consists of a long, flexible tube with a valve that keeps fluid from the brain flowing in the right direction and at the proper rate. One end of the tubing is usually placed in one of the brain's ventricles. The tubing is then tunneled under the skin to another part of the body where the excess cerebrospinal fluid can be more easily absorbed — such as the abdomen or a chamber in the heart.
- Ventriculostomy. Ventriculostomy is a surgical procedure that can be used for some people. In the procedure, your surgeon uses a small video camera to have direct vision inside the brain and makes a hole in the bottom of one of the ventricles or between the ventricles to enable cerebrospinal fluid to flow out of the brain.
- Surgery.Meningocele involves surgery to put the meninges back in place and close the opening in the vertebrae. Myelomeningocele also requires surgery, usually within 24 to 48 hours after birth. Performing the surgery early can help minimize risk of infection that's associated with the exposed nerves and may also help protect the spinal cord from additional trauma. During the procedure, a neurosurgeon places the spinal cord and exposed tissue inside the baby's body and covers them with muscle and skin. Sometimes a shunt to control hydrocephalus in the baby's brain is placed during the operation on the spinal cord.