Analysis of Traditional Chinese Medicine Symptoms in Children with Spastic Cerebral Palsy: A Data Mining Study

BACKGROUND: Cerebral palsy (CP) ranks as a major cause of motor disabilities in children, with spastic CP making up roughly 70-80% of all CP cases. The primary objective of our study is to identify characteristics of Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM) symptom of spastic CP, thereby establishing correlations between the TCM symptom and the disease, providing a more scientific theoretical foundation for TCM treatments on spastic CP, enabling a deeper comprehension of clinical interventions, ultimately, improving rehabilitation outcomes in TCM treatment for spastic CP.

METHODS: We conducted a data mining study on TCM symptom of spastic CP children aged 4-14 years old treated at Xi'an Encephalopathy Hospital Affiliated to Shaanxi University of Chinese Medicine, from October 2021 to March 2023. The medical records of all eligible and complete spastic CP patients were extracted, processed for data cleansing, transformed, and subsequently analyzed to discern distinctive TCM symptom. K-Means Clustering Analysis and Association Rule Analysis were used for data mining.

RESULTS: Core symptoms identified for spastic CP encompassed "Motor Dysfunction", "Impaired Speech", "Delayed Development", "Limb Stiffness", "Rigidity in the limbs", "Intellectual Impairment", "Timidity and susceptibility to startle responses", "Muscle Wasting", and "Pale or Dull Complexion". Among the top-ranking associations of symptom, patterns emerge wherein "Motor dysfunction" intertwine with "Impaired speech", "Motor dysfunction" coexist with "Delayed development", and "Impaired speech" are accompanied by "Delayed development".

CONCLUSION: This study identified the core symptom of spastic CP and tentatively suggests that the clinical manifestations of spastic CP are essentially consistent with the TCM pattern "liver exuberance and spleen weakness". This finding has facilitated the preliminary establishment of correlations between TCM pattern differentiation and the disease in medicine. It is anticipated that this correlation will bring tangible benefits to a larger number of children with spastic CP.