Neurological assessment in infants discharged from a neonatal intensive care unit

Use of the Hammersmith Infant Neurological Examination in infants with cerebral palsy: a critical review of the literature

“…The sequential use of the HINE allows clinicans to follow longitudinally high-risk infants during the first year of corrected age, providing specific cut-off scores at different ages and identifying early signs of CP. 11,[13][14][15] These results therefore strongly suggest that the HINE should be used to assess infants at neurological risk, both preterm and term born, from 3 months to 24 months. Longitudinal assessments will allow differentiation of transient and more permanent abnormalities, and help in planning appropriate intervention.…”

“…These infants, despite showing some abnormalities on the HINE at 6 months, such as reduced axial tone or abnormal movements, did not develop CP. It is of interest, however, that global suboptimal scores, when not associated with CP, were found to be associated with minor neurological signs or low psychomotor development …”

Diagnosing cerebral palsy in full‐term infants

“…18 This scoreable neurological assessment can be easily used in the clinical setting and can be learned with minimal training. Optimal scores are defined with cut-off values for CP at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months, 37 and scores less than 40 strongly predict nonambulant CP. In the case of suspected hemiplegia, it is important to document the number of asymmetries as mildly affected children may score in the optimal range.…”

The relationship between brain structure and function of very preterm infants, and the ability to predict neurodevelopmental outcomes

“…This limits the confidence with which we are able to use our 12 month neurological assessment data. Use of another standardised neurological assessment such as the Hammersmith Infant Neurological Examination (HINE), which generates a continuous score for neurological outcome, may have complemented our current neurological assessment [50][51][52] .…”

“…Electroencephalography has strong predictive capacity for outcome in the term infant with hypoxic ischaemic encephalopathy 51 . Increasing use in the preterm population, particularly in configurations using a limited number of electrodes, are evidenced with the first reports of its utility in predicting outcome 52,53 . Multi-channel EEG, typically 10-20 channels in the newborn, is well established in clinical practice and provides information about normal and abnormal functionality of the developing brain 54 .…”