Prematuridade e desenvolvimento

: caraterização do perfil desnvolvimento de um grupo de crianças prematuras (RNMBP e RNEBP)

Abstract

When speaking of child development is necessary to take into account that this occurs in several areas. Happens at motor, cognitive, psycholinguistic and socio-emotional, where several changes happen over time. Children born prematurely have a poorer development as regards the intelligence and other measures of neurological function, displaying a higher risk to develop behavioral problems as well as difficulty level of interaction partners, which may prejudice in some way related to their caregivers (Wallace, McCarton & Bennett, 1995). There is risk in the development of children exposed to biological risk factors (Ex. low weight and gestational age) and environmental (eg, low socio-economic resources, poor parental stimulation). Within the biological risk factors, the author refers to the birth weight and gestational age as the most important predictors of prognosis in child development (Benn, 1993 cit.in Mancini, Megale, Brandão, Melo & Sampaio, 2004). The aim of this study is the description of a developmental profile of children between 4 and 5 years, born prematurely. As well as understand the impact of biological risk factors and environmental development. The study consisted of 33 preterm infants (less than 35 weeks and less than 2,500 g). To evaluate the various areas of development the Scale that was used is Griffiths Mental Development from 2 to 8 years. After analysis, it was found that the results obtained indicated no significant differences between birth weight, gestational age and hospitalization time as compared with the overall results obtained in Development Scale. The results also showed that there are statistically significant differences only in the scale (scale of locomotion), where males obtained higher values than females.

Date of Award	12 Jul 2013
Original language	Portuguese
Awarding Institution	Universidade Católica Portuguesa
Supervisor	Elisa Veiga (Supervisor)