Original articleIncreased Risk of Adverse Neurological Development for Late Preterm Infants
Section snippets
Study Population
The sample for this study was drawn from the Northern California KPMCP, the characteristics and information systems of which were described in detail in earlier reports.17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 27, 28, 29 To be eligible for the study, children had to: 1) born alive at 1 of the 12 KPMCP birth facilities (the KPMCP medical centers at Fresno, Hayward, Oakland, Redwood City, Sacramento, San Francisco, Santa Clara, Santa Rosa, Santa Teresa, South Sacramento, Vallejo, and Walnut Creek) between Jan 1,
Analysis Dataset
A total of 142 735 children born at ≥30 weeks gestation were included in the initial dataset. Of these, 144 records were excluded because the infant died during the birth hospitalization, 12 records were excluded because of missing sex, 1 record with a clearly erroneous birth weight was excluded, and 1257 records were excluded because the infant did not have at least 1 day of follow-up time. Follow-up time was defined as the date of the last visit identified in the medical record minus the
Discussion
On the basis of a contemporary dataset from which children born extremely premature (<30 weeks) were excluded, this study demonstrates that moderate prematurity confers an increased risk for CP and DD/MR beyond infancy. Most important, we demonstrate a 3-fold increased risk of CP and significantly higher rates of DD/MR for late preterm infants compared with term infants. A total of 2.1% of the late preterm infants in our study population were identified as having CP, DD/MR, or seizures compared
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Cited by (0)
This research was supported by the March of Dimes, The Permanente Medical Group, Inc. and Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, Inc. The findings and conclusions in this report are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the affiliated agencies. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.