16 Facts About Spina bifida

Spina bifida is a birth defect in which there is incomplete closing of the spine and the membranes around the spinal cord during early development in pregnancy.

Spina bifida is believed to be due to a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

Spina bifida is a type of neural tube defect related to but distinct from other types such as anencephaly and encephalocele.

Unlike most other types of neural tube defects, spina bifida occulta is not associated with increased AFP, a common screening tool used to detect neural tube defects in utero.

Many people with this type of spina bifida do not even know they have it, as the condition is asymptomatic in most cases.

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Many individuals with spina bifida have an associated abnormality of the cerebellum, called the Arnold Chiari II malformation.

Unlike typically developing children, youths with spina bifida do not tend to improve in their executive functioning as they grow older.

Children with spina bifida are more likely than their peers without spina bifida to be dyscalculic.

Individuals with spina bifida have demonstrated stable difficulties with arithmetic accuracy and speed, mathematical problem-solving, and general use and understanding of numbers in everyday life.

Individuals with spina bifida tend to have better reading skills than mathematics skills.

Children and adults with spina bifida have stronger abilities in reading accuracy than in reading comprehension.

Spina bifida is believed to be caused by a combination of genetic and environmental factors.

Spina bifida occurs when local regions of the neural tube fail to fuse or there is failure in formation of the vertebral neural arches.

In one case, a man born with spina bifida was awarded a $2-million settlement after court found his mother's OBGYN negligent for not performing these tests.

Ultrasound screening for spina bifida is partly responsible for the decline in new cases, because many pregnancies are terminated out of fear that a newborn might have a poor future quality of life.

Trial concluded that the outcomes after prenatal spina bifida treatment are improved to the degree that the benefits of the surgery outweigh the maternal risks.