The purpose of this article was to investigate whether or not FastICA can separate identical motor unit action potential trains (MUAPTs) of the 8-channel surface electromyographic (sEMG) signals constructed by an sEMG model into the independent components. Firstly, we have examined how much the increase of motor units (MUs) in ...

At 1 year we assessed the neurodevelopmental outcomes in infants undergoing cardiac surgery, seeking to explore the predictive value of perioperative markers of cerebral injury. We prospectively enrolled 47 neurodevelopmentally normal infants prior to planned cardiac surgery. Postoperative monitoring consisted of 10-channel video synchronised, continuous electroencephalography from 6 to 30 ...

OBJECTIVE: To determine predictive validity of the Bayley Infant Neurodevelopmental Screener (BINS) during the first 2 years of life with a group of children at risk for developmental delay due to environmental risk factors. METHOD: The setting consisted of home visits to participants. The BINS was administered to 106 children, ...

AIM: To identify biological and environmental factors associated with poorer mental and motor development at age 12 mo in urban communities in northeast Brazil. METHODS: A cohort of 245 infants born during January August 1998 in six hospitals in the interior of Pernambuco was followed twice weekly from birth until ...

It is estimated that 11% of births in developing counties are term low-birth-weight (LBW); however, there is limited information on the development of these infants. Our objectives were to determine the effect of psychosocial intervention on the development of LBW infants and to compare term LBW and normal-birth-weight (NBW) infants. ...

The Arabic Scale of Death Anxiety (ASDA) was constructed and validated in a sample of undergraduates (17-33 yrs) in 3 Arab countries, Egypt (n = 418), Kuwait (n = 509), and Syria (n = 709). In its final form, the ASDA consists of 20 statements. Each item is answered on ...

Early identification of infants at risk for developmental delay is of the utmost importance to initiate appropriate intervention. Although early detection can be a challenge, the primary care practitioner is in the ideal position to recognize and refer these children. Early recognition requires an in-depth knowledge of the child's history, ...

The relationships between different levels of severity of ambulatory cerebral palsy, defined by the Gross Motor Function Classification System (GMFCS), and several pediatric outcome instruments were examined. Data from the Gross Motor Function Measure (GMFM), Pediatric Orthopaedic Data Collection Instrument (PODCI), temporal-spatial gait parameters, and oxygen cost were collected from ...

Infants who are born small for gestational age (SGA) are at risk for developmental delays, which may be related to deficiencies in zinc, an essential trace metal, or to deficiencies in their ability to elicit caregiver responsiveness (functional isolation hypothesis). The objective of this study was to evaluate at 6 ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: The impact of parent education programs on early intervention programs is not thought to be uniform among children from majority and minority populations. This study examined the relationship between maternal childrearing practices and behaviors and the developmental status of Mexican-American infants. SUBJECTS: Participants were 62 Mexican-American mother-infant ...

BACKGROUND: We prospectively assessed growth and motor-social development during the first 18 months of life in 126 live births (122 pregnancies) to 109 women with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) who conceived on and continued metformin (1.5-2.55 g/day) through pregnancy. METHODS: The lengths and weights of PCOS neonates were compared with ...

BACKGROUND: ICSI is widely used as a method of assisted reproduction in Greece. Research shows that children conceived after the application of ICSI develop normally. However, Bowen et al. (1998) reported that children conceived after ICSI had lower scores in the Mental Development Index (MDI) of the Bayley Scales of ...

In order to complement findings in the field of early autism and in the context of our studies on the quantitative neurobiological evaluation of patients with autism, we studied a large population of infants later diagnosed as having autistic disorder, using multivariate descriptive statistical methods. The population included 74 infants ...

AIM: Care based on the Newborn Individualized Developmental Care and Assessment Program (NIDCAP) has been reported to exert a positive impact on the development of prematurely born infants. The aim of the present investigation was to determine the effect of such care on the development at preschool age of children ...

OBJECTIVE: Previous multicenter studies have shown significant center differences in neonatal characteristics and morbidities. This study evaluated center differences in outcome at 18 to 22 months among extremely low birth weight (ELBW; 401-1000 g) infants after adjusting for demographics and antenatal interventions, and it identified neonatal interventions associated with outcome ...

BACKGROUND: Infants with Prader-Willi syndrome (PWS) show abnormalities of body composition. Children with PWS treated with growth hormone (GH) demonstrate improved body composition and motor skills. OBJECTIVE: To assess body composition and motor changes in infants with PWS following 6 months GH therapy. METHODS: Twenty-five infants with PWS (mean age ...

In a sample of eighty-five 15-month-old infants, salivary cortisol was obtained prior to and following a potentially stressful episode in which the child was confronted with a stranger and with a frightening robot. Infant characteristics such as anger proneness, cognitive competence, and attachment security were expected to be related to ...

PURPOSE: We evaluated the Late-Life Function and Disability Instrument's (LLFDI) concurrent validity, comprehensiveness and precision by comparing it with the Short-Form-36 physical functioning (PF-10) and the London Handicap Scale (LHS). METHODS: We administered the LLFDI, PF-10 and LHS to 75 community-dwelling adults (> 60 years of age). We used Pearson ...

This study analyzes health, growth and neurodevelopmental outcome of infants who received prenatal corticosteroids with or without thyroxine for fetal lung maturation. During a 12 month period infants from a prospective double blind study who received either steroids or steroids combined with thyroxine for pulmonary maturation and who had reached ...

Descriptive statistics for the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit Network Neurobehavioral Scale summary scores are provided based on data from 1388 1-month-old infants in the Maternal Lifestyle Study (MLS) of prenatal drug exposure and child outcome. The multisite MLS is described, followed by tables with descriptive statistics and percentile for the ...

AIM: To investigate the association between low Apgar score and the development of cholestasis. METHODS: Seventy-seven cholestatic infants, all referred to our tertiary centre and born between 1987 and 1996 were studied. Twenty-eight patients had biliary atresia (BA), 36 had various intrahepatic disorders and for 13 patients the aetiology of ...

Several birth cohort studies have shown adverse effects of perinatal exposures to methylmercury (MeHg) and environmentally persistent organic pollutants (POPs). These chemicals are ingested mainly through fish consumption, but little is known about the hazardous effects in Japanese, whose fish consumption is high. The present study, the Tohoku Study of ...

OBJECTIVE: Assessment of clinimetric properties and diagnostic quality of a stress measurement scale (COMFORT scale). DESIGN: Sample of an open population. SETTING: Neonatology department (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit), Academic Medical Centre/Emma Children's Hospital, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. METHOD: One clinical expert and 9 observers observed ventilated premature born babies simultaneously. Criterion ...

The articles in this special section provide exciting and useful perspectives on the role of temperament in the development of child and adolescent psychopathology. These articles are valuable both in summarizing what is known and in highlighting issues that must be addressed before further progress can be made. In the ...

OBJECTIVES: The Maternal Phenylketonuria Study was designed to determine the effect of a phenylalanine (Phe)-restricted diet in reducing the morbidity on the fetus. Congenital abnormalities were noted, with the focus on the effect of congenital heart defects (CHDs) and microcephaly (MICRO) on developmental outcome at 4 and 6 years of ...

OBJECTIVES: Parents of premature infants often perceive their infants as medically vulnerable. High parental perception of child vulnerability (PPCV) is associated with disproportionately high health care utilization. The objectives of this study were to determine whether higher PPCV is correlated with worse developmental outcome in premature infants at 1-year adjusted ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE: Despite general recognition that surviving very-low-birth-weight (VLBW) infants are at risk for neurodevelopmental impairments and educational achievement difficulties, there has been relatively little study on their functional status in areas such as locomotion, communication, cognition, self-care, and interpersonal relationships. This study assessed the functional status of VLBW ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: In the literature, there are conflicting data on the neonatal outcome in preterm infants who were delivered for maternal pre-eclampsia. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of maternal pre-eclampsia on neonatal morbidity and 2-year developmental outcome in a population of preterm infants delivered ...

PURPOSE: This study was designed to examine the interrater reliability of early intervention providers scoring of the Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS) and to examine whether training on the AIMS would improve their interrater reliability. METHODS: Eight early intervention providers were randomly assigned to two groups. Participants in Group 1 ...

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to analyze changes in performance over time on the Bayley Scales of Infant Development II (BSID-II) in a sample of infants at high risk of developmental disabilities. METHODS: Cognitive and motor performance of 53 infants, 34 with prenatal drug exposure (DE group) and ...

We report a case where an antenatal scan showed a cerebral vessel dilatation consistent with a vein of Galen malformation (VGAM). After delivery the diagnosis was confirmed on MRI scan. The infant's condition was stable in relation to the two important clinical indicators, mainly not in congestive cardiac failure and ...

PURPOSE: This prospective longitudinal study was designed to evaluate whether the four-month Movement Assessment of Infants (MAI), predicted two-year cognitive and motor developmental status measured by the Mental (MDI) and Psychomotor (PDI) Scales of the Bayley Scales of Infant Development (BSID). METHODS: The subjects were 134 infants born at term ...

AIM: To evaluate the Apgar score predictive power for mortality during different periods in the first year of life in a population with a very low mortality rate. METHODS: The records of all singleton live births without severe congenital malformations and length of gestation >25 wk (n = 976635) were ...

PURPOSE: The Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS) is a screening tool for identifying delayed motor development from birth to 18 months of age. The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric structure of the AIMS, including the hierarchical scale of items and the precision for measuring infant ability ...

BACKGROUND: We hypothesized that cognitive impairment and hemodynamic instability after infant cardiac surgery with cardiopulmonary bypass might be exacerbated by hemodilution. METHODS: In a single-center randomized trial with blinded assessment of outcomes, we compared use of 2 hemodilution protocols during hypothermic cardiopulmonary bypass with infant cardiac surgery. The primary perioperative ...

OBJECTIVE: To compare the results of neurosonography (NSG) with subsequent neurodevelopmental testing in extremely low birth weight (ELBW; < or =1000 g) neonates. STUDY DESIGN: NSG at hospital discharge was available in 164 neonates and Bayley Scores of Infant Development (BSID II) evaluations (MDI and PDI) were performed in 158 ...

BACKGROUND: In the genetic Rett disorder (RD), infants make some progress then suffer a dramatic developmental regression, usually before 2 years of age. Home videos, taken before the problems are recognized, offer an objective source for detecting early signs. METHODS: Thirty-six health visitors and midwives were invited to view brief ...

BACKGROUND: Comorbidity is a strong predictor and confounds many studies of outcomes. Previous studies have shown that the Charlson Comorbidity Index (CCI) and the Davies score predict mortality in peritoneal dialysis (PD) patients. However, there are few data on the comparison of comorbidity scores. OBJECTIVE: To compare the CCI (combines ...

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the impact of maternal hypothyroxinaemia during early gestation (fT4 below the lowest tenth percentile and TSH within the reference range: 0.15-2.0 mIU/l) on infant development, together with any subsequent changes in fT4 during gestation. DESIGN: A prospective 3-year follow-up study of pregnant women and their children up ...

Apolipoprotein E (APOE) regulates cholesterol and fatty acid metabolism, and may mediate synaptogenesis during neurodevelopment. To our knowledge, the effects of APOE4 isoforms on infant development have not been studied. This study was nested within a cohort of mother-infant pairs living in and around Mexico City. A multiple linear regression ...

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the usefulness of the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale (NBAS) as a tool to assess the risk of later developmental disabilities. The study subjects were 209 low birth-weight and/or premature infants admitted to the NICU at the Nagasaki University Hospital, Nagasaki, Japan. These ...

OBJECTIVE: To test the hypothesis that postoperative length of stay (LOS) after infant heart surgery might be an easily measured surrogate marker for various events that culminate in later adverse cognitive outcome. METHODS: Among 160 eligible patients with D-transposition of the great arteries undergoing reparative surgery in infancy, 155 (97%) ...

BACKGROUND: Neuromaturational theory and dynamic systems theory make different assumptions about the rate of development of motor and communication skills. AIMS: The stability of fine motor, gross motor, and communication scores of infants was evaluated to test these assumptions. STUDY DESIGN: This longitudinal descriptive study evaluated infants in their homes ...

BACKGROUND: Infants born of low birth weight often have poor subsequent growth (especially if they were born very preterm), which has been shown to relate to later motor and cognitive development. AIMS: To assess a cohort of preterm infants at the age of 7 years for growth, motor, and cognitive ...

OBJECTIVE: Exposure to organochlorine compounds (OCs) occurs both in utero and through breastfeeding. Levels of hexachlorobenzene (HCB) found in the cord serum of newborns from a population located in the vicinity of an electrochemical factory in Spain were among the highest ever reported. We studied the association between exposure to ...

OBJECTIVE: To examine factors influencing preterm infant language development. DESIGN: Longitudinal. SETTING: Infants were seen for developmental follow-up at 7, 13, and 26 months corrected age in the school of nursing. PARTICIPANTS: The sample consisted of 43 mothers and their preterm infants who were below 2,000 g and 36 weeks ...

AIM: The objective of this study was to determine behavioural outcome and risk factors for abnormal behaviour at 2 y corrected age in very premature infants in a regionally defined, prospective cohort study. METHODS: The Leiden Follow-Up Project on Prematurity includes all liveborn infants of < 32 wk gestational age, ...

INTRODUCTION: Modern day obstetric and neonatal care has dramatically increased the survival of the extremely-low-birth-weight (ELBW) neonates. As the limits of viability decrease, it is of paramount importance to have reliable data on long-term morbidity. Long-term follow-up of these high-risk survivors is thus becoming an integral part of neonatal intensive ...

The aims of the study were to examine the relationship between long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid (LCPUFA) status at diagnosis of phenylketonuria (PKU) and neurodevelopment through the first 12 months of life, and to assess whether any difference exists between infants breastfed and bottlefed in the first days of life on ...

A sample of 7-month-old African-American infants, exposed to maternal blood lead levels less than 5 microg/dL, were assessed with the Fagan test of Infant Intelligence. The results indicate significant effects on memory and cognitive functioning. Specifically, infants who scored in the upper 5th to 15th percentile of novelty preference scores ...