Cognitive performance at school age of very low birth weight infants with bronchopulmonary dysplasia

The hypothesis was that bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) adversely affects cognitive performance at school age. This prospective cohort study examined three groups of children at 8 to 10 years of age. Group 1 (n = 311) consis ted of very low birth weight (VLBW) infants without BPD and Group 2 (n = 95 ) consisted of VLBW infants with BPD. Group 3 (n = 188) consisted of term i nfants without BPD. Regression analysis determined the effect of BPD on eig ht performance measures while controlling for possible confounding variable s. Children in Group 3 had the best performance and children in Group 2 had the poorest performance on all measures. These differences were significan t (p = .0001) for the Full Scale IQ, Performance IQ, and reading and math g rades and ages. Children in Groups 3 and 1 performed better than children i n Group 2 for the Verbal IQ (p = .0001) and the Developmental Test of Visua l-Motor Integration (p = .0012), but for these two measures there was no si gnificant difference between children in Groups 3 and 1.Thus, poorer perfor mance was found in VLBW infants with a history of BPD.