Preterm birth and developmental problems in infancy and preschool age Part II: cognitive, neuropsychological and behavioural outcomes

Abstract

Few studies focus on the neuropsychological and behavioural outcomes of preterm children at preschool age. This article reviews the most recent and relevant contributions on cognitive, neuropsychological and behavioural outcomes, and the neuroradiological findings in extremely and very preterm infants. In the first 2 years of life, cognitive impairment is common: it has an incidence of 30-40% and a higher prevalence than neuromotor and neurosensorial impairments. Recent studies report that even preterm infants with no major disabilities at preschool age perform more poorly than term peers in multiple neuropsychological domains, such as language, attention, memory, visuomotor and visuospatial processing and executive functions. The incidence and severity of problems increase with decreasing gestational age. A delayed acquisition of neuropsychological functions and/or the occurrence of behavioural problems at preschool age are likely to be predictive of the high rate of cognitive deficits at school age and in adolescence. Neuropsychological functions across multiple developmental domains should be assessed longitudinally during routine follow-up checks.

Spatial Working Memory Deficits in Male Rats Following Neonatal Hypoxic Ischemic Brain Injury Can Be Attenuated by Task Modifications

“…We considered the possibility that less HI damage occurred in Study 1 versus 2, due to a slight change in our surgical procedures (the acquisition of an incubator and slide warmers for Study 2)—particularly given evidence that cooling provides neuroprotection against HI injury [91,102,103,104,105,106]. Notably, Study 1 practices had been successfully employed in our lab for many years (with significant anatomic and behavioral HI effects reported; [86,87,88,107]).…”

“…This emphasis reflects the fact that memory impairments are an extremely common outcome in clinical HI populations, and may relate to poor academic achievement, as well as lower IQ scores in childhood [55,56,57,102,103,104,107]. HI-associated memory impairments may also co-occur with additional disabilities, for example in executive functioning and/or attention [51,52,57,64,65,67,105,106,112,113]. Overall, memory deficits appear to form a core impediment to educational success for neonatal HI populations.…”

Estudio descriptivo de escolares de la provincia de concepción con antecedente de prematuridad extrema

“…Estas funciones influyen en y posibilitan la participación del sujeto en los procesos académicos y de aprendizaje, por lo tanto se esperaría que se encontrasen funcionando en forma normal a la edad de inicio de la escolaridad. Se ha comprobado que escolares con antecedente de prematuridad rinden significativamente menos que sus pares de término en evaluaciones de funciones neuropsicológicas (García, Cruz-Quintana et al, 2012;Mejías, Esteban et al, 2015;Pugliese et al, 2013;Aarnoudse-Moens et al, 2009). …”

Estudio comparativo de funciones neuropsicológicas a los 8 años de niños prematuros y nacidos de término

“…Estos niños presentarían un rendimiento más pobre que sus pares a término en evaluaciones de memoria 7 ; atención visual, habilidad visomotora, copia de diseños, procesamiento fonológi-co 8 ; procesamiento visoespacial, lenguaje 9 . En evaluación de FE niños PE exhiben un rendimiento menor que los controles en flexibilidad cognoscitiva pero no en memoria de trabajo ni capacidad de inhibición 10 .…”