Parental and professional agreement in developmental assessment of very‐low‐birthweight and term infants

Abstract

The aim of this prospective follow‐up study was to evaluate the accuracy of a parent‐completed questionnaire compared with professionally detected developmental delay. Parents of 108 very‐low‐birthweight (VLBW) infants and parents of 279 term control infants completed the German version of the Revised Prescreening Developmental Questionnaire (R‐PDQ) at the corrected age of 12 months. Simultaneously, infants underwent developmental examination using the Griffiths Developmental Scale. Sixty‐nine VLBW infants were classified as not delayed, 16 as delayed by both methods (conegativity 76% and copositivity 94%), as compared to 240 and six term control infants (conegativity 88%, copositivity 94%). The questionnaire suggested delay in 22 VLBW infants and 32 control infants, which was not substantiated by professional examination (P=0.006). In contrast, examination‐diagnosed delay was missed by the questionnaire in one infant in each group. The R‐PDQ is a reliable monitoring instrument for both VLBW and term infants at the age of 12 months. Parents of VLBW infants tend to underestimate their infants’development.