SPEECH AND LANGUAGE OUTCOMES 3 YEARS AFTER NEONATAL INTENSIVE-CARE

Although major handicap rates have been documented in children who req uired neonatal intensive care, minor handicap rates, including speech and language problems, have received less attention. This paper report s the first stage of a longitudinal study of 118 children, which inves tigated the speech and language outcomes at 3 years of age. Difference s from the normal population were found for the articulation measure, but not for the language comprehension and expression measures used. A major overall communication problem was determined to exist in 13% of the children. The impact of perinatal, medical and environmental vari ables was investigated. Variables such as low birthweight, short gesta tional age and mechanical ventilation, found to be important in other studies, had no significant impact on the speech and language outcomes of this cohort of 3 year olds. However, for children who had experien ced respiratory distress syndrome, there was an effect on articulation and language expression. Paediatric complications and maternal educat ion level had the largest effects on language comprehension and expres sion, suggesting they were the persistent variables which most contrib uted to speech and language outcomes at 3 years of age.