title: Parent-completed developmental screening in premature children: a valid tool for follow-up programs.
abstract: Our goals were to (1) validate the parental Ages and Stages Questionnaires (ASQ) as a screening tool for psychomotor development among a cohort of ex-premature infants reaching 2 years, and (2) analyse the influence of parental socio-economic status and maternal education on the efficacy of the questionnaire. A regional population of 703 very preterm infants (<35 weeks gestational age) born between 2003 and 2006 were evaluated at 2 years by their parents who completed the ASQ, by a pediatric clinical examination, and by the revised Brunet Lezine psychometric test with establishment of a DQ score. Detailed information regarding parental socio-economic status was available for 419 infants. At 2 years corrected age, 630 infants (89.6%) had an optimal neuromotor examination. Overall ASQ scores for predicting a DQ score ≤85 produced an area under the receiver operator curve value of 0.85 (95% Confidence Interval:0.82-0.87). An ASQ cut-off score of ≤220 had optimal discriminatory power for identifying a DQ score ≤85 with a sensitivity of 0.85 (95%CI:0.75-0.91), a specificity of 0.72 (95%CI:0.69-0.75), a positive likelihood ratio of 3, and a negative likelihood ratio of 0.21. The median value for ASQ was not significantly associated with socio-economic level or maternal education. ASQ is an easy and reliable tool regardless of the socio-economic status of the family to predict normal neurologic outcome in ex-premature infants at 2 years of age. ASQ may be beneficial with a low-cost impact to some follow-up programs, and helps to establish a genuine sense of parental involvement.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neonatal Medicine, University Hospital, Nantes, France. cyril.flamant@chu-nantes.fr
authors.forename: Cyril
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Flamant
authors.forename: Bernard
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Branger
authors.forename: Sylvie
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Nguyen The Tich
authors.forename: Elise
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: de la Rochebrochard
authors.forename: Christophe
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Savagner
authors.forename: Isabelle
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Berlie
authors.forename: Jean-Christophe
authors.initials: JC
authors.lastname: Rozé
mesh_terms: D002648:Child; D015331:Cohort Studies; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007234:Infant, Premature / Q000254:growth & development*; D008297:Male; D008403:Mass Screening; D010290:Parents; D012372:ROC Curve; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires