ADAPTED GRIFFITHS SCALE AS A CURRENT EXPERIENCE OF EVALUATION OF PSYCHOMOTOR DEVELOPMENT OF PRESCHOOL CHILDREN

Abstract

Introduction. Premature infants are a special category of children with an inherent morpho-functional immaturity and specific pathological conditions that cause significant differences in survival, morbidity and consequences of caring for these infants compared to children of other weight categories. In the structure of long-term adverse effects of premature birth remains a high frequency of neurological disorders that require further improvement of diagnostic methods and timely correction to improve the prognosis of further development. Despite the development of numerous assessment tools for prognosis of long- term adverse effects of premature infants and techniques determining the extent of violations during the last three decades, there was no study providing a comprehensive overview of those tools, as well as their strengths and weaknesses.Aim. Improve the long-term effects of preterm birth by using an adapted Griffiths scale in preschool children. Materials and methods. An assessment of the psychomotor development of 105 preschool children was estimated. Assessment of psychomotor development was performed using an adapted Griffiths scale and a traditional method. During the study, this category of children was under the supervision of follow-up doctors to systematically assess their health. Dynamic examination was performed during the first year of life every 3 months, from the second to the sixth year of life - according to the individual rehabilitation plan. Patients were divided into 3 groups depending on the severity of disabling pathology.Results. An analysis of indicators of psychomotor development (traditional methods) of preschool children born prematurely, which were divided into 3 groups according to the severity of disabling pathology: Group A Children with severe long-term consequences that led to disability - 54 (51.4 %)Group B. Children with long-term consequences that require correction - 24 (22.8 %)Group C. Children with long-term consequences that do not significantly affect the general condition - 27 (25.7 %). According to the results of the survey, it can be revealed that more than 70% of respondents had the equivalent of delayed psychomotor development of various patterns. Тhe analysis of the assessment of psychomotor development showed that the structure of the causes of delayed psychomotor development in preschool children had the same trend for different methods of examination. However, the Griffiths adapted assessment demonstrates more accurate outcomes of a certain patient, makes it possible to quickly detect long-term adverse effects of preterm birth, and gives recommendations for infants and families to develop an individual rehabilitation and habilitation program, and examinations in dynamics.Conclusions. It has been established that the adapted Griffiths psychomotor development scale is a valid diagnostic tool in the cohort of preschool children in order to determine psychomotor development indicators, calculate the child's intellectual coefficient and form an individual patient profile.