Parental and professional agreement in developmental assessment of very-low-birthweight and term infants.

The aim of this prospective follow-up study was to evaluate the accuracy of a parent-completed questionnaire compared with professionally detected developmental delay. Parents of 108 very-low-birthweight (VLBW) infants and parents of 279 term control infants completed the German version of the Revised Prescreening Developmental Questionnaire (R-PDQ) at the corrected age of 12 months. Simultaneously, infants underwent developmental examination using the Griffiths Developmental Scale. Sixty-nine VLBW infants were classified as not delayed, 16 as delayed by both methods (conegativity 76% and copositivity 94%), as compared to 240 and six term control infants (conegativity 88%, copositivity 94%). The questionnaire suggested delay in 22 VLBW infants and 32 control infants, which was not substantiated by professional examination (P=0.006). In contrast, examination-diagnosed delay was missed by the questionnaire in one infant in each group. The R-PDQ is a reliable monitoring instrument for both VLBW and term infants at the age of 12 months. Parents of VLBW infants tend to underestimate their infants' development.

Umbilical artery blood gases in healthy term newborn infants.

OBJECTIVE: To study the distributions of pH and gas values in umbilical arterial (UA) blood of normal newborns following uncomplicated pregnancies and vaginal births. METHODS: In 681 consecutive normal term infants who were born during 1990, we examined the UA pH and blood gas values obtained immediately following delivery. Maternal inclusion criteria were defined as an uncomplicated pregnancy and a normal spontaneous vaginal delivery. Umbilical artery blood samples were collected at each birth and were evaluated for pH, carbon dioxide pressure (PaCO2), oxygen pressure (PaO2), bicarbonate, and base excess. All newborns in this study had the following inclusion criteria: singletons, no malformations, growth appropriate for gestational age (AGA), and Apgar scores of 7 or more at 1, 5 and 10 min of life. RESULTS: The lowest UA pH was 7.04 and the 10th percentile value was 7.21. The lowest UA PaO2 was 4.6 mmHg and the 10th percentile value was 10.1 mmHg. The highest UA PaCO2 was 75.4 mmHg and the 90th percentile 62 mmHg. The 10th percentile of the base deficit in the extracellular fluid was 5.9 mmol/l. CONCLUSIONS: The distributions of the UA pH and gas values of a collective of normal newborns were illustrated.