2025 Volume 61 Issue 1 Pages 57-64
To test the hypothesis that the effect of being born small for gestational age（SGA）on developmental delay is more pronounced with increasing gestational age in extremely preterm infants, this study analyzed the association between being born SGA and developmental quotient（DQ）at corrected age 3 years, stratified by gestational age. We included 168 children who were admitted to our NICU between 23 weeks 0 days and 27 weeks 6 days of gestation between 2011 and 2019, and who underwent the Kyoto Scale of Physiological Developmental test at corrected age 3 years. Infants with chromosomal anomalies and congenital malformations were excluded. We defined SGA infants as those whose birth weight was less than the 10th percentile and compared the DQs of SGA and non-SGA infants at 3 years of age. The corrected 3-year DQ of SGA children was statistically significantly lower than that of non-SGA children only at 26 and 27 weeks’ gestation. The slope of the regression line showing the correlation between birth weight Z-score and corrected 3-year DQ was greatest at 26 weeks’ gestation. In conclusion, the results of this study did not prove our hypothesis.
