Predicting severe motor impairment in preterm children at age 5 years

Objective To determine whether the ability to predict severe motor impairment at age 5 years improves between birth and 18 months. Design Ancillary study of the Caffeine for Apnea of Prematurity Trial. Setting and Patients International cohort of very low birth weight children who were assessed sequentially from birth to 5 years. Outcome Measures Severe motor impairment was defined as a score Results Of 1469 children, 291 (19.8%) had a severe motor impairment at 5 years. The AUC increased from 0.650 soon after birth, to 0.718 (p Conclusions Prediction of severe motor impairment at 5 years of age using a cumulative risk model improves significantly from birth to 18 months of age in children with birth weights between 500 g and 1250 g. Trial registration number ClinicalTrials.gov number NCT00182312.