How Do Premature Infants Function as Adults?

Risks for medical and social disabilities increased with decreasing gestational age.

Increasing survival of very premature infants has led to concern about adult outcomes. In the largest and longest follow-up study to date, investigators in Norway used linked data from national registries to examine adult outcomes of nearly 1 million infants (gestational age, ≥23 weeks) who were born without congenital anomalies between 1967 and 1983 and followed through 2003 (age, 20 to 36 years).

The prevalence of virtually all adverse medical and social outcomes, except for measures of criminality, increased with decreasing gestational age. For example, the prevalence of mental retardation was 4.4% among 1822 adults born at 23 to 27 weeks’ gestation compared with 0.5% among those born at term, and the prevalence of cerebral palsy was 9.1%…

Reviewing Author

Howard Bauchner, MD

Disclosures

Grant / research supportHuman Resources and Services Administration; NIH; NIH-NHLBI; USDA; GlaxoSmithKline

Editorial boardsArchives of Disease in Childhood (Editor-in-Chief)

Howard Bauchner, MD

Disclosures

Grant / research supportHuman Resources and Services Administration; NIH; NIH-NHLBI; USDA; GlaxoSmithKline

Editorial boardsArchives of Disease in Childhood (Editor-in-Chief)