Features of Physical and Psychomotor Development in Children with Brain Ischemia.

Background: Brain ischemia is one of the leading causes of morbidity and mortality in infants. Currently, many factors influence the degree of development of ischemia and the consequences affecting the child's body. The purpose of this study was to find the characteristics of the physical and psychomotor development of children with brain ischemia.

Methods: Based on empirical data, physical (centile tables were used) and psychomotor development (Griffiths scale was used) were studied in 246 full-term children who suffered mild and moderate brain ischemia (ICD-10 codes: 91.1-91.4). There was a frequency of physical disharmony and psychomotor dysfunction, association with each other and the modeling of prognostic characteristics. The following methods were used for the analysis: Pearson chi-square calculation, Kaplan-Meier method and logistic regression.

Results: The prevalence of physical disharmony in the studied population of children who had cerebral ischemia is 19.5%, and that of psychomotor dysfunction is 35.0%. The results of the analysis indicate the presence of an association between physical development and psychomotor development of children with cerebral ischemia (P ≤ 0.001; %95 CI OR 1.961-7.270). The disharmony of physical development in children with cerebral ischemia is higher in female children (OR = 2.061, CI = 1.002-4.236), and it grows with an increase in the childbearing age of the mother (OR = 1.090, 95% CI = 1.018-4.236) and decreases with a decrease in the birth weight of the child (OR = 0.189, 95% CI = 0.104-0.345). The probability of occurrence of psychomotor dysfunction is higher in children whose mothers had a complicated birth (OR = 2.065, 95% CI = 1.209-3.527).

Conclusion: In children who have suffered brain ischemia, 1/5 of cases develop physical disharmony, and 1/3 of cases develop psychomotor dysfunction. These long-term consequences studied are interrelated with such prognostic characteristics as childbearing age and complicated childbirth in the mother, as well as the sex and weight of the child. The incidence of a combination of physical disharmony and psychomotor dysfunction in children who have suffered cerebral ischemia is 11.8%.