Perinatal events and further developmental outcome--assessment of a newborn's individual prognosis. 1. Neonatal period and results of an eight years' follow-up.

The aim of the prospective study described in this paper was to develop a prognostic screening method which permits to give an individual prognostic estimate for every newborn, with an accuracy acceptable for clinical purposes. In the following, the condensed data of the case histories as well as of the clinical and laboratory findings in 47 of initially 60 preterm and term newborns with and without cardiorespiratory distress were analyzed under two different aspects. In the first part, the general statistical relationships are presented in the followed up children, who were classified under various groups according to the clinical course during the first two years of life and to the developmental stage reached at the age of two and six years. It was shown that such a procedure will not suffice in clinical practice for the purpose of individual prognostic estimates. The analysis of the clinical classifications of the six-year-old children in comparison with their school performance at the age of eight years yielded a high accuracy of the previous clinical estimation.