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Learning Objective 1: 1. The learner will be able to understand physical growth patterns of premature infants during early stage of life to 40th weeks of corrected ages.
Learning Objective 2: 2. The learner will be able to describe the relationship between degree of prematurity and physical growth up to 40th weeks of corrected ages.
Methods: In a longitudinal study, 267 premature infants were consecutively recruited in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) in Incheon, Korea. Infants born with congenital/genetic/nutritional problems were excluded due to possibility of growth deviation. After IRB approval, WT, LGTH and HC were weekly collected up to 40 weeks of CA. They were categorized into 2 groups; GA group with data at gestational age (GA) and the CA group with data at CA. CA group was categorized into 3 groups by WHO guideline for degree of prematurity; group 1 (n=7) for extreme prematurity; group 2 (n=45) for moderate prematurity; and group 3 (n=215) for mild prematurity at the time of birth. Data were analyzed with α=.05 in two-tails using SPSS 18.0.
Results: GA groups revealed higher WT, LGTH and HC compared to CA group at almost any week of life. Among CA groups, group 3 showed the highest WT, LGTH and HC measurements, followed by group 2 and group 1 up to 37th week of CA, though this pattern disappeared at 38~40th week of CA. Reversely, group 1 revealed the highest growth rate in all measures , followed by group 2 and group 3. Significant interaction was observed in WT, LGTH and HC between week of life and any type of groups.
Conclusion: Higher WT, LGTH and HC in GA groups indicated that intra-uterine environment is the superior for growth than extra-uterine environments regardless of the degree of prematurity. Regardless of acceleration in growth rate, smaller infants remain as smaller, indicating the early catch-up did not happen at least up to the 40th week of to CA.
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