Evaluation and Assessment of Sensory and Motor Abnormalities in High Risk Neonates with

Abstract

Introduction: The incidence of pre term delivery and the survival rate of preterm babies is rising due to new medical technologies. In developing countries, very low birth weight (BW) babies less than 32 weeks of gestational age (GA) have a high risk for neuro-developmental retardation. They need to be followed up at regular intervals so as to assess various morbidities they develop during hospital stay as also post discharge and neurodevelopment outcome for early stimulation. Methods: Follow up schedule of <32 weeks neonates is every 15 days till 3 months than every monthly for one year than 3 monthly till 2 years of age. The evaluation consisted of neurological assessments, cranial ultrasounds and developmental assessments. Results and Discussion: The study was completed with 69 babies. Male & female ratio was 1.3:1. In our study 62.3% were SGA babies. Convulsion was most common morbitiy 75.3%. Many of the tone abnormalities detected in the first six months in high risk infants start normalizing by 9 months and disappear by 12 months. In this study tone abnormalities improve in 39(85%) of neonates. only 3(5.6%) neonates had sensory-neural hearing loss. 61% had ROP stage 1 and 24.4% neonates had ROP stage 2. Conclusion: Delay in individual domains of motor and sensory development can be diagnosed at an early age by us and thus domain specific early intervention therapy can be planned. This will help in decreasing the overall neuro-developmental delays and thus morbidity and overall outlook of preterm.