Medical correlates of infant development.

Attempts to correlate developmental outcome with medical complications affecting the fetus and infant have focused on the prenatal, intrapartum, and postnatal periods. The time beyond the newborn stage has not been explored in detail. The aim of this study was to relate events occurring during the gestational and neonatal periods as well as the infancy periods to later performance by the use of four medical scales. A total of 126 preterm infants were followed up prospectively from birth to 2 years of age. Medical complications occurring during the prenatal, intrapartum, and postnatal periods as well as the first nine months of life were recovered. No relationship was found between obstetric and neonatal events and developmental outcome. Significant correlations were seen between medical events of later infancy and development at 2 years of age.