Abstract
Due to improving medical practices a growing number of children born with low birth weight survive. This raises the need to map the mental development of these children in order to improve our understanding of this phenomenon.
It is increasingly observed that children with low birth weight show immaturity in areas of neurocognitive and psychosocial maturation. The perinatal burden as well as the multitude and variability of influencing factors, places children with low birth weight in a risk group for a wide range of neurodevelopmental psychopathologies, emotional-cognitive deficits, behavioural problems and disruption of adaptive functions, compared to children born with normal birth weight.
Frequently are reported slight variations in speech development, learning difficulties, working memory, attention disorders and weakening of executive functions. The prevalence of psychiatric disorders is 22-28% in children with low birth weight in school age, with the highest risk for anxiety disorders, ADHD, pervasive developmental disorders and behavioural disorders.
Deficits are also observed in socioemotional and motor development. This raises the need for subsequent long-term and high-quality care for these children and the need to understand the specifics of the development of extremely low birth weight (ELBW, < 1000 g) and very low birth weight (VLBW, < 1500 g) children.
However, at present the long-term psychological support of these children is highly inadequate, unsystematic and calls for further development. In conclusion of this article we summarise the results of the study "New methods in the follow-up care for children with perinatal stress in the Centre for Complex Care of newborn at risk at the Clinic of Child and Adolescent Medicine of the General Faculty Hospital and the 1st Faculty of Medicine of Charles University", in which they assessed children aged 5 to 9 with very low and extremely low birth weight.
Small deviations in development have been identified, with the greatest difficulty observed in areas of visual perception and selective attention, weakening of executive functions - difficulties in planning and organising, working memory and behavioural control. Quantitative analysis did not show a statistically significant difference in cognitive or socioemotional development among children with ELBW and VLBW.