[Quality of life of young adults whose birth weight was under 1.500 g]

Quality of Life (QoL) has been assessed in eighty-five young adults, born in 1971-1974 with birthweight < 1500 g (VLBW) and admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit of the State University Hospital in Copenhagen, Denmark. Their QoL has been compared to that of 85 subjects with birth weight > 2500 g (NBW) born in the same period at The State University Hospital. The subjects were interviewed by telephone on the basis of well defined theories on QoL by Anton Aggernaes. Quality of Life was assessed both in objective terms and as judged by the interviewed person. Subjects born with VLBW who were free of handicaps had QoL-scores (both objective and subjective) fully comparable to the NBW group. VLBW subjects reporting various physical and mental handicaps had subjective QoL-scores comparable to scores in the NBW group but the objective QoL-scores were significantly lower.