Background

Cerebral palsy is an umbrella term encompassing disorders of movement and posture, attributed to non‐progressive disturbances occurring in the developing fetal or infant brain. As there are diverse risk factors and causes, no one strategy will prevent all cerebral palsy. Therefore, there is a need to systematically consider all potentially relevant interventions for their contribution to prevention.

Objectives

To summarise the evidence from Cochrane reviews regarding the effects of antenatal and intrapartum interventions for preventing cerebral palsy.

Methods

We searched the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews on 7 August 2016, for reviews of antenatal or intrapartum interventions reporting on cerebral palsy. Two authors assessed reviews for inclusion, extracted data, assessed review quality, using AMSTAR and ROBIS, and quality of the evidence, using the GRADE approach. We organised reviews by topic, and summarised findings in text and tables. We categorised interventions as effective (high‐quality evidence of effectiveness); possibly effective (moderate‐quality evidence of effectiveness); ineffective (high‐quality evidence of harm or of lack of effectiveness); probably ineffective (moderate‐quality evidence of harm or of lack of effectiveness); and no conclusions possible (low‐to very low‐quality evidence).