Has the COVID-19 pandemic negatively impacted children's development? An assessment of the neurodevelopment of premature babies born during the pandemic.

BACKGROUND: Pandemics, such as COVID-19, have the potential to adversely affect children's development due to a variety of negative factors at the level of children, families, and services. In this study the effect of the pandemic on the cognitive, language and motor development of premature babies who are among the most vulnerable group, were evaluated. METHODS: The study included 236 premature infants who were followed at Hacettepe University Department of Developmental Pediatrics. The Bayley-Third Edition Developmental Assessment (Bayley III) was used to evaluate the neurodevelopment of 152 premature infants from the pre-pandemic group and 84 from the post-pandemic group at the corrected age of 18-24 months. The perinatal and sociodemographic risks were also evaluated. RESULTS: No difference in Bayley III scores (cognitive, language, and motor) was found between the pre- and post-pandemic groups. Furthermore, the multivariate covariance analysis displayed that regardless of the pandemic, infants with higher maternal education consistently scored higher in the cognitive, language, and motor domains; and the motor area scores of infants with moderate perinatal risk were also significantly higher than infants with high perinatal risk. CONCLUSIONS: It is crucial to monitor the development of vulnerable children who encounter developmental risks, such as premature babies. Fortunately, no significant effect was encountered during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, this does not underweigh the need for close supervision in extraordinary circumstances. Additionally, it should be noted that severe postnatal comorbidities, perinatal risks, and social factors, such as maternal education level, interact to influence the neurodevelopmental outcomes of preterm infants.

Comparison of the Parents' Evaluation of Developmental Status and Ages and Stages Questionnaire Developmental Screening Tests in a Eurasian Country.

OBJECTIVE: The Parents' Evaluation of Developmental Status (PEDS) and the Ages and Stages Questionnaire (ASQ) are developmental screening tools that are commonly used in pediatric practice worldwide. We aimed to compare the screening results of the PEDS and the ASQ in children with a wide range of ages and to evaluate the degree of agreement between the tests across the age groups. METHODS: The study was conducted with the participation of 327 children aged 3 to 72 months. Participants were administered the PEDS and then the ASQ. Children with known developmental disabilities were included in the study to represent a real-world clinical practice setting and evaluated with a clinical workup. RESULTS: The median age of the children was 35.1 months, with a range of 3 to 72 months. The percentage of children with known developmental disabilities was 16.5%. The actual agreement between the PEDS and ASQ was 74% with a concordance represented by Cohen κ of 0.422 (p < 0.001) in the total sample. Furthermore, the agreement was higher in children aged 25 to 36 months and 37 to 48 months than for the other ages. CONCLUSION: We compared the clinical features of the ASQ and PEDS across the age groups, and they demonstrated moderate agreement. The present study also showed the performance of the PEDS and suggests that it should certainly be used for developmental screening in routine child health care practice in Eurasia, thus supporting the use of such parent-completed developmental tools that should be encouraged for universal screening.

Turkish validation of the maternal responsiveness global rating scale in slow-to-talk toddlers.

BACKGROUND: The relation between maternal responsiveness and language development has been shown in previous literature however it is difficult to evaluate responsiveness because of the difficulties involved when coding the specific patterns of parent-child interactions. The maternal responsiveness global rating scale is important because it requires less time and expertise from professionals and predicts the language outcome of children. The aim of the study was to adapt the Maternal Responsiveness Global Rating Scale into Turkish, thereby making it accessible to a variety of professionals, and creating a way to use this useful scale. METHODS: Twenty-seven 18- to 42-month old children who had been admitted to the Developmental Pediatrics outpatient clinic with concerns of speech delay and had received a diagnosis of language disorder with the standardized language test were included in the study. The general development and language development of each participant was evaluated using Denver II, Bayley-third edition and Pre-school Language Scale-5. After the translation study of the Maternal Responsiveness Global Rating Scale, video collecting and rating procedures and finally reliability and validity analyses were implemented. RESULTS: The results of this study demonstrated that the Turkish translation of the Maternal Responsiveness Global Rating Scale shows strong evidence of adequate reliability and validity and is a feasible tool to measure responsiveness in routine child health care practice for children with language delay. CONCLUSIONS: This in expensive, easy-to-use and reliable tool may be recommended in order to identify which slow-to-talk toddlers and their mothers need early intervention and may be used by community-based practitioners and researchers in Turkey to support language development during early intervention stages.

Do early parental postnatal depression, attachment style and perceived social support affect neurodevelopmental outcomes of premature infants?

BACKGROUND: The birth of a premature infant is both a stressful event for both parents and associated with an increased rate of postnatal depression (PND). Additionally some mothers may have delayed feelings of attachment to their babies because of the medical procedures or possible medical complications. Social support is known as an important factor for well-being in the postnatal period. However there is scarce data about these factors for fathers. We aimed to identify the impact of parental PND, attachment style and social support on premature infant development considering the prematurity degree and risk groups. METHODS: This prospective study was conducted by including 96 infants who were born preterm. Mothers and fathers were given Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS), Adult Attachment Style Scale (AASS), and Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS) to fill out when their infants' corrected age was 3 months. The developmental evaluation was conducted with Bayley III at the corrected 6 months and 18 months of age. RESULTS: Postnatal depression scores were more in mothers than fathers, the rates of secure attachment and social support were similar between mothers and fathers. Factors associated with the neurodevelopmental outcomes including prematurity degree and risk groups, EPDS, AASS and MSPSS scores were analyzed for both parents. In multivariate analysis, fathers' depression scores were inversely associated with cognitive development (p = 0.030, R2 = 0.080, B=-0.283) and mothers' anxious/ambivalent attachment style was inversely associated with language development (p = 0.011, R2 = 0.108, B=-0.329) at the age of corrected 6 months old. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings underscore that the efforts to improve developmental outcomes of premature infants should include parental well-being taking into account new fathers' depressive symptomatology and maternal anxious/ambivalent attachment.