A review of developmental outcomes of term infants with post-asphyxia neonatal encephalopathy

Abstract

Background/aims: Post-asphyxia neonatal encephalopathy (NE) is one of the main causes of disabilities in term-born infants. This review attempted to investigate the developmental outcomes of term-born infants with post-asphyxia NE. Method: An electronic search on various databases identified 13 empirical studies against the selection criteria modified from the consensus statement from the International Cerebral Palsy Task Force. Results: The overall quality of methodology of these studies was average. The random effect meta-estimate of the proportion of infants having adverse developmental outcomes such as death, cognitive impairment, sensory-motor impairments was 47% (95% CI 36-57%). Signif..