Longitudinal study of children with perinatal brain damage in whom early neurohabilitation was applied: Preliminary report

• It is a longitudinal study of perinatal brain damaged children.
• Katona’s neurohabilitation procedure was used as treatment.
• 89% of preterm ≤34 weeks treated had normal neurodevelopment.
• Only 20% of non-treated preterm ≤34 weeks had normal neurodevelopment.
• Application of neurohabilitation to perinatal brain damaged infants is recommended.

ObjectiveThe neurohabilitation treatment has been shown to be a successful method for decreasing the sequelae of perinatal brain damage (PBD) in Hungarian population. The goal of this pilot trial was to introduce this procedure by describing the results of its application in infants with PBD as demonstrated by clinical, developmental and MRI studies. As this procedure has proved to be useful, according the declaration of Helsinki, no control clinical trial was permitted.ParticipantsInfants younger than 2 months of corrected age (CA) with prenatal and/or perinatal risk factors for brain damage. Two groups were considered. One group was treated using the “neurohabilitation” method (n = 20), and the other was not treated (n = 13) because treatment was voluntarily discontinued after the initial evaluation. Evaluations were carried out prior to 2 months of CA and at 6–8 years of age. All children showed abnormal clinical and MRI characteristics in the first study.ResultsThe treated group had a higher percentage (90%) of children with normal outcome than did the non-treated group (38%; OR = 2.37, CI 95% = 1.2–4.7; p < 0.005). In this latter group, only one out of five (20%) children born at or before 34 weeks of gestational age had a normal outcome. In contrast, eight out of nine treated preterm infants had normal outcomes (8/9 = 89%, OR = 4.45, CI 95% = 0.7–26; p = 0.017).ConclusionsThis pilot trial confirms previous studies suggesting that Neurohabilitation decreases the neurological and cognitive sequelae of preterm and at-term infants with PBD.