Introduction:

at present, preterm births amount to 10% of total births in Spain and account for 50% of disabilities in children, and it is believed that children born preterm birth are at higher risk of experiencing developmental problems compared to children born at term. Our study aimed to determine whether preterm infants are more likely to have developmental delays.

Patients and methods:

the study included 58 children aged less than 6 years managed at a primary care centre in the region of Madrid born between 34 and 37 weeks’ gestation (late preterm) and matched controls born to term. We used the Battelle Developmental Inventory to assess the presence of developmental delays.

Results:

we did not find differences between the two groups in the mean scores for the total test or the different development domains, nor in the number of children with relevant standard deviations from the mean (-1.0, -1.5 and -2) versus those without such deviation. Some degree of delay compared to normal development was found in 24 of the children (20.69%), and the delay had not been suspected before testing in 14 of them (58.3%). We found a prevalence of developmental delay of 0.224 in children born at term and 0.207 in children born late preterm.

Conclusions:

we did not significant differences in the prevalence of developmental delays between the two groups. Delays had not been suspected before testing in more than 50% of the children in whom they were identified, which evinces the need to include psychomotor delay screening protocols in the primary care child wellness checkup programme for the early diagnosis of these problems.

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