School-aged neurodevelopmental outcomes for children born extremely preterm

Abstract

As survival rates for children born extremely preterm (EP, <28 weeks' gestation) have increased with advances in perinatal and neonatal care, their long-term functioning and quality of life assume more importance. Outcomes in early childhood provide some information, but outcomes at school-age are more informative of life-long functioning. Children born EP at school-age have substantially higher rates of intellectual impairment, poorer executive, academic and motor function, more neurodevelopmental disability, and poorer health-related quality of life than do contemporaneous term-born controls. Because the rates of adverse outcomes remain unacceptably high, and particularly since some outcom..