Cognitive, motor and comunicative-linguistic developmental trajectories of extremely low gestational age preterms compared to full terms: a longitudinal study in the first year of life.

We tested the hypothesis that extremely low gestational age (ELGA) preterm birth without major cerebral damage impacts developmental outcomes and trajectories in the first year, expecting poorer developmental outcomes, a higher rate of impairments and different developmental trajectories in ELGA with respect to full term (FT) infants. Direct tools and a parental questionnaire with four assessments in the first year were employed. Method. Seventeen monolingual Italian ELGA (<=28 weeks) preterms without major cerebral damage and 11 monolingual Italian full terms, comparable for biological and social characteristics, were evaluated at 3, 6, 9 and 12 months (corrected age for preterms) through the Griffiths Mental Development Scales (GMDS-R), providing a general developmental quotient (DQ) and five sub-quotients (SQ). The “Primo Vocabolario del Bambino” -PVB- (Italian form of the MB-CDI) was administered to the parents at 9 and 12 months. Results. Use of repeated measure multivariate analyses of variance showed that, compared to FTs, ELGA infants exhibited significantly lower DQ and SQ scores (personal and social skills, eye and hand coordination, performance, tendency in locomotor and hearing and language) in the GMDS-R, with mild or moderate impairments in some ELGA at 6 (6%), 9 (12%) and 12 months (24%), while not in FT infants. ELGA compared to FT infants showed also significantly lower gesture/action production and word comprehension scores in the PVB. Differences between the two samples became larger toward the end of the first year of life. Conclusions. Our findings highlight that several domains are impacted by ELGA preterm birth in the first year with poorer developmental outcomes, evidence of impairment in some infants and different developmental trajectories between ELGAs and FTs. Relevance of repeated assessments by employing both developmental scales assessing specific cognitive, motor, and linguistic competences and a parental questionnaire providing deeper information for communicative-linguistic competences observed in natural daily contexts was shown.