Low-birthweight children at early school-age: a longitudinal study.

Eighty-seven per cent of a cohort of 299 low-birthweight (LBW) infants (less than or equal to 2000 g) were examined at age 6 years 8 months, together with 111 control children. All the controls and 248 of the LBW children were individually assessed in school. Information about another 13 LBW children was obtained by questionnaire. Problems in primary school were related to social grade, evidence of early intra-uterine insult, sex, postnatal complications and neurological and developmental status in the first year of life. Multiple birth, gestation and intra-uterine growth were not clearly related to problems in school. The incidence of major handicap, as compared with LBW infants born between 1953 and 1955, showed little change when earlier-born infants who had been subjected to severe restriction of fluid and calorie intake were excluded. Ninety-two per cent of LBW children traced were attending normal schools. Those who showed no evidence of early intra-uterine insult and who were neurologically normal in the first year of life were largely indistinguishable from control children reared in similar homes.