Medical and psychological status of one-year-old premature babies without severe disability - a case-control prospective study

Background. - This case-control prospective study was conducted to determin e whether and how medical, psychological and affective development differs from premature to full-term newborns without severe disability. Population and methods. - Newborns under or at 33 weeks gestation (W) were included from December 1992 to January 1994 and were matched with two contr ols. The same examiners evaluated each infant at the effective postnatal ag e of nine to ten months. Results. - Fifty premature babies (average gestational age [GA] = 30.7 W) w ere compared to 100 controls. The main problems were bronchopulmonary (P = 0.03) and sleep (P = 0.027) disorders. Motor disability was suspected in 9% of the cases and none control (P = 0.00003, OR = 3.44). By multivariate an alysis, cases differed from the controls by infant-mother relation disturba nces (OR = 13.3), motherhood anxiety (OR = 13.3), poor expressiveness (OR = 5.6), peripheral tonus anomalies (OR = 39.5) and sleep troubles (OR = 5.8) . Conclusion. - Premature newborns had risks for the child-mother relation bu t not for psychoaffective development disturbances. (C) 1999 Editions scien tifiques et medicales Elsevier SAS.