Longitudinal Follow-up of Prematurely Born Children: Outcomes of Home Stimulation Programme to Age Four - A Preliminary Analysis

Abstract

This paper presents the initial findings from an ongoing project which examines the development of a group of prematurely born children at selected times during each of the first four years of life. Some of these children participated in a home stimulation programme. As the reader will appreciate, in reporting on research in process one faces the frustration of the unknown both in the data yet to be collected and in the data collected but still in the process of analysis. CONTEXT OF THE PROBLEM The incidence of preterm birth has changed very little since the turn of the century. The phenomenon of regionalized health care since 1960, however, has created strategically placed neonatal intensive care units, where the mortality rates for the preterm infant have declined markedly. In the same 20 years, research has been mounted to provide planned stimulation regimes for the increasing numbers of surviving preterm infants.