Language abilities of 8-year-old preterm children among the northern Finland 1-year birth cohort for 1985-1986.

The language abilities of 42 8-year-old preterm children with birth weight < 1,750 g from a 1-year birth cohort in northern Finland was studied with four different language tests. Control children from the same birth cohort matched individually with their preterm pairs for age, sex, twinship, mother's education, place of residence, birth order and family type were also studied. In psycholinguistic test, auditory skills did not differ between the preterm and the full-term groups. Nor did any other linguistic subtest differentiate between the groups. Instead, the preterm children scored significantly poorer than their controls in visual subtests. The study also showed that the poor performance in visual tests was associated with neonatal morbidity, namely neonatal infections, need for continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) treatment and patent ductus arteriosus (PDA). When studying the language abilities of preterm children, we suggest that qualitative methods should be used to analyse linguistic skills. We recommend versatile follow-up of preterm children until school age.

QT interval of the ECG, heart rate and arterial pressure using propofol, methohexital or midazolam for induction of anaesthesia.

The effects of propofol 2 mg/kg, methohexital 2 mg/kg or midazolam 0.3 mg/kg were studied on the QT interval of the ECG corrected by the heart rate (QTc), heart rate and arterial pressure during induction of anaesthesia in 87 ASA class I-(II)-patients. The patients were randomly allocated to one of the three anaesthetic groups. The incidence of the patients with a prolonged QTc interval (= more than 440 ms) ranged from 29 to 41% between the groups. In each group these patients were treated separately. After all anaesthetics, the QTc interval was significantly prolonged in the patients with a normal control QTc interval, whereas in the patients with a prolonged control QTc interval, it tended to be shortened both after propofol and methohexital and it was significantly shortened after midazolam. After injection of suxamethonium, no significant QTc interval changes occurred in the patients with a normal control QTc interval in either the propofol or the methohexital groups, whereas in the patients with a prolonged control QTc interval treated with propofol the QTc interval decreased significantly 60 s after suxamethonium when compared with the corresponding preceding values. The mean values in the propofol group in the patients with a normal control QTc interval were always below the upper limit of the normal range.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)