Prakesh S. Shah, Kit Y. Wong, Susan Merko, Roshine Bishara, Michael Dunn, Elizabeth Asztalos, Pauline B. Darling
Postnatal growth failure in preterm infants: ascertainment and relation to long-term outcome
Objective: Traditional measure of postnatal growth failure assessment has poor discriminatory power for long-term outcomes. Our objective was to identify measure of postnatal growth failure associated with long-term outcome in preterm infants born at <28 weeks' gestation.
Patients and methods: Four measures of defining postnatal growth failure at 36 weeks corrected gestational age: (1) weight <10th centile, (2) weight <3rd centile, (3) z score difference from birth >1 and, (4) z score difference from birth >2; were compared for their predictive values and strength of association with adverse neurodevelopmental outcomes at 18–24 months.
Results: Postnatal growth failure defined as a decrease in z score of >2 between birth and 36 weeks corrected gestational age had the best predictive values compared to other postnatal growth failure measures, however, it was significantly associated with psychomotor developmental (P=0.006) but not with mental developmental indices (P=0.379).
Conclusion: Postnatal growth failure defined by z score change influenced psychomotor but not mental tasks in this cohort. This method of ascertainment could be useful to identify infants who might benefit from nutritional interventions.
Journal of Perinatal Medicine, Walter de Gruyter
Print ISSN: 1619-3997
Volume: 34, 12/2006
Pages: 484 - 489
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