Babies who weigh only 2.2 pounds or less at birth are much more likely than those with normal weight to develop chronic physical and mental problems by age eight, researchers said Tuesday.
A look at 219 such children born between 1992 and 1995 found 14 percent had developed cerebral palsy, 21 percent had asthma, 38 percent had an IQ under the threshold denoting retardation, 47 percent had poor motor skills, 10 percent had very poor eyesight, and roughly two-thirds were characterized as having “poor adaptive functioning” and “functional limitations,” the study said.
By comparison, 176 children born during the same years with normal weights were two or three times less likely to suffer from the same problems. The complications developed by the low birth weight group affect a child’s ability to perform basic tasks, learn and connect with others.
“Our findings underscore the extraordinary costs of care that will be needed to manage the medical, educational and other service needs of the large portion of these extremely low-birth-weight children who develop chronic conditions,” wrote study author Maureen Hack of Case Western Reserve University.
Medical advances since the 1990s have dramatically increased survival rates for such infants, according to the report published in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association.
Of the 23,000 babies born in the United States in 2002 weighing between 1.1 to 2.2 pounds, 70 percent survived, according to the report.
Thorough follow-up studies of these children are needed to ”help in addressing ethical dilemmas in the care of marginally viable infants,” wrote Jon Tyson of the University of Texas in Houston and Saroj Saigal of McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, in a editorial accompanying the study.
“The mortality and long-term morbidity of these infants should be related to treatment decisions to forgo or withdraw intensive care,” they wrote.