Use of the bayley infant neurodevelopmental screener with premature infants

Objective: To examine the utility of the Bayley Infant Neurodevelopmental Screener (BINS) for the neurodevelopmental follow up of high-risk preterms. Methods: The study group consisted of 122 preterm infants of the gestational ages between 26 and 37 weeks. Medical factors such as; mean birth weight, gestational age, gender, birth place and type, number of multiple pregnancy, days of hospitalization and oxygen therapy, use of antenatal steroids, and occurence of sepsis for each patient were evaluated. The neurodevelopmental examination and BINS administration was made at each visit to the patients whose ages were adjusted for prematurity. Results: At the corrected age of 7-10 months patients at 26-29 GA had significantly lower total means of BINS scores when compared to those of the other two groups at 30-32 and 33-37 GA (P<0.01 and P<0.001). At the corrected age of 3-4 months, the total means of the BINS scores of the patients at 30-32 GA were lower than that of the patients at 33-37 GA (P<0.009). at 7-10 months the scores of the items defining the expressive and cognitive functions of the patients at 26-29 GA were lower than those of the patients at 30-32 GA (P<0.05) and 33-37 GA (P<0.05). At 16-20 months the mean scores of the items of expressive functions were significantly lower in patients of the 26-29 GA compared to those of the patients of 33-37 GA (P<0.03). Conclusion: As data accumulates, BINS will turn out to be a quick way of determining infants at risk of developmental delay in many aspects of neurologically high risk conditions.