Child Disability Screening Shows Promise

Main Category: Pediatrics / Children's Health
Also Included In: Hearing / Deafness;  Eye Health / Blindness;  Neurology / Neuroscience
Article Date: 28 Sep 2007 - 15:00 PST

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A new system to identify developmental problems including disability in premature infants has shown promise.

The new system, called the Preterm-Targeted Screening and Surveillance Program, has successfully identified cerebral palsy, developmental and intellectual delays, blindness and deafness in a trial group of 202 premature babies throughout Queensland.

Children born prematurely have higher rates of disability and need more monitoring compared to the general pediatric population.

UQ PhD graduate Dr Margo Pritchard, who designed the program, said it was better at identifying problems in preterm children compared to the national-based universal child health screening program but not as good as a neonatal follow up program.

Dr Pritchard said her program, which was designed to be conducted by GPs and nurses, provided transition for families who had completed or were not scheduled onto a neonatal intensive care follow up program.

She said it was not designed to replace the neonatal intensive care follow-up and screening program.

"If you look at the GPs who identified disability, the ones in our program identified over 70 percent of the disabled children," Dr Pritchard said.

"Using the universal based childhood screening program, they only identified 30 percent of the babies.

"Using our system, GPs identified all children with cerebral palsy.

"However, like many programs used to screen at such an early age, we overidentified many children some of whom may be at risk of potential delays.

"It's very, very hard to have definitive diagnosis of development at 12 months.

"The program is designed to continue for 7 years so GPs and parents can plan child health care based on the best evidence and screening practices."

Dr Pritchard, 49, received several grants and Fellowships to support her PhD research with UQ's School of Medicine.

She plans to apply for a U.S. Fellowship next year.

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The University of Queensland, Brisbane Australia