Physical Growth in the Neonatal Intensive-Care Unit and Neuropsychological Performance at Preschool Age in very Preterm-Born Singletons (original) (raw)

2015, Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society : JINS

We studied the associations between early postnatal growth gains and neuropsychological outcome in very preterm-born children. Specifically, we wished to establish whether relationships exist between gains in head circumference (relative to gains in body-weight or length), from birth to hospital discharge, and intellectual, language, or motor, performance at preschool age. We used data from 127 preschoolers, born <33 weeks, all graduates of the William Beaumont Hospital Neonatal Intensive-Care Unit (NICU) in Royal Oak, MI. Cognitive, motor, and language outcomes were evaluated using the Wechsler Preschool and Primary Scales of Intelligence-Revised, Peabody Developmental Scales - 2nd Edition, and the Preschool Language Scale - 3rd Edition, respectively. Differences between Z-scores at birth and hospital discharge, calculated for three anthropometric measures (head circumference, weight, length), were variables of interest in separate simultaneous multiple regression procedures. We...