The development of low-risk preterm infants from infancy to early adulthood

Due to improvements in neonatal intensive care many more preterm infants with an extremely low birth weight and a gestational age below 26 weeks survive. However, the vast majority of preterm infants are low-risk with a birth weight above 1000g. This group is mostly considered to be “normal“ and increasingly neglected in research, although longitudinal studies showed that neuropsychological and behavioral problems increase during school age. Therefore questions concerning school success and quality of life all the way into early adulthood are important for this group. Research on these issues has focussed on high-risk infants. Here, group differences mainly result from lower health related quality of life due to physical handicap.

The current study included a group of former low-risk premature infants with birth weights between 1000g and 2500g, gestational age below 37 weeks, and no additional pre-, peri, or postnatal risks, and a stratified control-group of children born at term. Evaluation of growth parameters showed stability over time for the risk group but were not related with later cognitive or behavioral outcome. There were no significant differences between the two groups with regard to school outcome or quality of life during school-age and young adulthood, though the preterm group received early intervention more frequently. Even though the general outcome is positive, this latter finding underscores the importance of long-time follow-up care even for low-risk preterm infants.