Speech and language outcomes 3 years after neonatal intensive care

Although major handicap rates have been documented in children who required neonatal intensive care, minor handicap rates, including speech and language problems, have received less attention. This paper reports the first stage of a longitudinal study of 118 children, which investigated the speech and language outcomes at 3 years of age. Differences from the normal population were found for the articulation measure, but not for the language comprehension and expression measures used. A major overall communication problem was determined to exist in 13% of the children. The impact of perinatal, medical and environmental variables was investigated. Variables such as low birthweight, short gestational age and mechanical ventilation, found to be important in other studies, had no significant impact on the speech and language outcomes of this cohort of 3 years old. However, for children who had experienced respiratory distress syndrome, there was an effect on articulation and language expression. Paediatric complications and maternal education level had the largest effects on language comprehension and expression, suggesting they were the persistent variables which most contributed to speech and language outcomes at 3 years of age.