Objectives: To determine morbidity at 2 years' corrected age in a cohort of neonates with a birth weight of less than 1,500 g born in 1999-2000 in a tertiary hospital in the Autonomous Community of Madrid.
Patients and methods: An observational longitudinal follow-up study was performed in a cohort of 213 infants with a birth weight of < 1,500 g. Of these, 188 (87%) completed the 2-year follow-up. Various types of neurosensorial disability were studied, paying special attention to the main impairments: vision, hearing and motor impairment, and low development quotient.
Results: Among the patients initially included in the study, 87% completed the follow-up; 17.1% had one or more major sequela. We found one case (0.4%) of bilateral neurosensorial deafness and one case of bilateral blindness. At the age of 2 years, 5.8 % (11/188) had cerebral palsy, 14.9% had a development quotient below 85 and 18% had not reached the 3rd percentile for weight. Factors of poor neurological prognosis were subnormal head size at the age of 2 years and white matter disease (including persistent intraparenchymal periventricular echodensity and ventriculomegaly or irregular shape) as ultrasound findings.
Conclusions: Less than a fifth of the very low birth weight infants presented severe sequelae at 2 years of follow-up. Factors of poor neurological prognosis were subnormal head size at 2 years and the presence of white matter disease on ultrasonography. The findings on growth and development were worrying, since 18 % of the patients had not reached the 3rd percentile for weight at 2 years' corrected age.