Original articleSelf-Perceived Health, Functioning and Well-Being of Very Low Birth Weight Infants at Age 20 Years
Section snippets
Very Low Birth Weight Group
A population of 490 VLBW children were admitted to Rainbow Babies and Children’s Hospital (Cleveland, Ohio) between 1977 and 1979 of whom 312 (64%) survived to 20 years of age. The original young adult study population studied at 20 years of age included 242 VLBW participants.1 One additional subject with cerebral palsy did not participate. Two hundred and forty-one subjects (116 men and 125 women) completed the CHIP-AE. They constitute 77% of the surviving birth cohort. A description of
Sociodemographic Status, 20-Year IQ, and Neurodevelopmental Status of the Very Low Birth Weight and Normal Birth Weight Participants
More mothers of the VLBW participants than mothers of the NBW controls had not completed high school when the children were 8 years of age. However, the VLBW and control groups did not differ in maternal marital status, race, or in the composite sociodemographic risk score.1 At 8 years of age, the VLBW participants had significantly higher rates of neurosensory impairment and subnormal IQ than NBW subjects12 (Table I), findings that persisted at 20 years of age.1 The neurosensory impairments in
Discussion
We sought to examine the health, functioning, and well-being of VLBW infants at 20 years of age to obtain an individual personal assessment of the health-related aspects of their lives. VLBW subjects, as compared with NBW controls, reported similar outcomes in terms of their satisfaction with health and self, and in the levels of physically and emotionally experienced symptoms. On the other hand, the VLBW subjects reported better risk avoidance but poorer psychosocial resilience than their NBW
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2018, Clinics in PerinatologyCitation Excerpt :In a national registry of adults in Norway, Moster and colleagues,19 described medical disability affecting working capacity as varying from 10.6% for adults born at 23 to 27 6/7 weeks’ gestation to 2.4% for those born later preterm and 1.7% for term-born adults. A cohort of 241 very low birth weight (<1500 g birth weight) young adults from Cleveland, Ohio, reported similar health, wellness, and functioning compared with term-born controls but greater risk avoidance and less resilience.20 Mental and emotional delays, restriction of activities of daily living, and self-care and chronic health disorders are more common in children born preterm than controls, which persists into adulthood.20
In their own words: Life at adulthood after very premature birth
2016, Seminars in Perinatology
Supported by grants RO1 HD34177 and MO1RR00080 (General Clinical Research Center) of The National Institutes of Health.