BACKGROUND Several studies reported that preterm infants were found to be hypersensitive to pain. However, longitudinal and quantitative assessments of subsequent pain thresholds in adolescence are scarce. OBJECTIVE To assess the tenderness threshold in adolescents born prematurely compared with matched children born at full term. DESIGN Case-control study. SETTING Children in the communi...

BACKGROUND Late preterm infants (LPIs) (34-36 weeks' gestation) account for up to 75% of preterm births and constitute a significant proportion of all neonatal admissions. This study assessed the impact of neonatal intensive or high-dependency care (IC) on developmental outcomes of LPIs at 3 years of age. METHODS This cohort study included 225 children born late preterm in Northern Ireland du...

There is ample evidence that children who are born preterm are at risk for language impairment [1-3]. However, not all children who are born preterm will experience difficulty developing language. Why some children have a language impairment and others do not may be owed to the presence of certain risk factors, as well as the absence of particular protective factors. It is possible that differe...

BACKGROUND Recent findings has shown that late preterm births (gestational weeks 34-36) and early term births (gestational weeks 37-38) is associated with an increased risk of several psychological and developmental morbidities. In this article we investigate whether late preterm and early term births is associated with an increased risk of emotional and behavioral problems at 36 months of age ...

This study compares early grammatical and lexical acquisition in 323 preterm and 166 full-term children at 24 months. The French MacArthur-Bates parental report was employed for analysis. Gestational age and birth order showed a significant effect on vocabulary size and grammatical distribution. Preterm children showed fewer words and produced more games, routines and animal noises words. Excep...

PURPOSE The objective of our study was to examine a possible influence of gestational age, birth weight, and Apgar score on amplitudes and latencies of P100 wave in preterm born school-age children. MATERIALS AND METHODS We examined the following group of school-age children: 28 with history of prematurity (mean age 10.56 ± 1.66 years) and 25 born at term (mean age 11.2 ± 1.94 years). The mon...

Preterm birth temporarily disrupts autonomic nervous system (ANS) development, and the long-term impacts of disrupted fetal development are unclear in children. Abnormal cardiac ANS function is associated with worse health outcomes, and has been identified as a risk factor for cardiovascular disease. We used heart rate variability (HRV) in the time domain (standard deviation of RR intervals, SD...

BACKGROUND Cerebral white matter abnormalities on term MRI are a strong predictor of motor disability in children born very preterm. However, their contribution to cognitive impairment is less certain. OBJECTIVE Examine relationships between the presence and severity of cerebral white matter abnormalities on neonatal MRI and a range of neurocognitive outcomes assessed at ages 4 and 6 years. ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Preterm and former preterm children frequently require sedation/anesthesia for diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. Our objective was to determine the age at which children who are born <37 weeks gestational age are no longer at increased risk for sedation/anesthesia adverse events. Our secondary objective was to describe the nature and incidence of adverse events. ...

Molnar, A. 2017. Structure and Function of the Retina in Children Born Extremely Preterm and in Children Born At Term. Digital Comprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Medicine 1318. 79 pp. Uppsala: Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. ISBN 978-91-554-9862-7. Background: Optical coherence tomography (OCT), multifocal electroretinography (mfERG) and full-field electroretin...