Receptive, expressive and visual skills of children born preterm and very low birth weight

Abstract

Introduction: Premature children are those born before 37 weeks of pregnancy and with very low weight (less than 1500 grams). Those conditions pose serious threats for infant development, including their speech, which makes infant development testing and newly-born premature babies monitoring important for reducing deleterious impacts on infant development, thereby propitiating a better quality of life for children and their families. Objective: To verify the performance of premature children with very low weight, from six to twenty-three months old, on their receptive auditory, expressive auditory and visual skills. Materials and methods: the project was approved by the "Committee on Ethics on Research with Human Beings" of the "Faculty of Dentistry of Bauru", according to resolution 466/12 from Comissão Nacional de Ética em Pesquisa - CONEP [National Commission on Research Ethics], which deals with research ethics (approval protocol number: 49811915.7.0000.5417). Our study will be carried on "Maternidade Santa Isabel" [Santa Isabel Maternity Hospital], a public institution which serves parturients by Sistema Único de Saúde (SUS) [Brazilian public health-care system]. The subjects of the study are 112 children from six to twenty-three months old, divided in two groups: 56 premature-born children make up the experimental group (EG) and 56 full term-born children, with normal development make up the comparative group (CG), organized according to sex, socioeconomic level and chronological age. It will be carried an initial interview with the adults responsible for the children and then we will apply the EarlyLanguageMilestoneScale. On children part of EG we will analyze data with and without the correction for gestational age. All evaluations will be recorded on video for posterior analysis. We will treat data statistically using descriptive methods, by calculating means, medians, standard deviations, minimum and maximum values and also using t-test, a non-parametric statistic treatment. We will consider 5% as the relevant significance level. (AU)