Neurologic development of children at age two who had been treated at a neonatal intensive care unit

The principal objective of this study was to evaluate, at 2 years of age, the neurological development of a group of children who had been treated in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) of the National Institute of Perinatology of Mexico. All the children born between 1 January 1992 and 31 December 1993 who had entered the NICU and stayed for 3 or more days were studied from the neurological, psychological, auditory, linguistic, motor, and neuromuscular standpoint. This group included 134 patients, who had had an average gestational age of 32 weeks and an average birth-weight of 1,677 g. They had stayed in the hospital an average of 51 days, and 75% of them had undergone artificial respiration. In the examination done at age 2, 66.5% of the children were normal and 8.2% had serious impairments. There were statistically significant associations between their neurological condition and the days of artificial respiration (P < 0.0001), the days spent in the NICU (P < 0.000004), and the gestational age in weeks (P < 0.03). There was no association between the children's sex and the results of the assessments. The study results showed a decrease in neural abnormalities in comparison with the results obtained in similar studies 10 years earlier.