Babies With Pierre Robin Sequence: Neuropsychomotor Development

Abstract

Background: The Pierre Robin Sequence presents heterogeneous symptoms, and each newborn can manifest from mild breathing and feeding difficulties to severe complications, as well as a predisposition to present changes in growth and neuropsychomotor development in the first years of life.

Objective: The aims were to evaluate and associate the neuropsychomotor development of zero- to 12-month-old children with Pierre Robin sequence (PRS) in the personal-social, fine motor-adaptive, language, and gross motor aspects.

Methods: The subjects of the study were 17 infants of both sexes with PRS admitted to the special care unit (SCU) of a reference hospital in the interior of the state of São Paulo, Brazil, in the age range of 20 days to 263 days. Developmental assessments were performed using the Denver Development Screening Test II. The evaluations were carried out in the SCU, with duration of 30 minutes each. Statistical analysis was descriptive using the Mann-Whitney test, two-proportion equality test, and Spearman correlation. The level of significance was set at 0.05.

Results: According to Denver Development Screening Test II, median 78.5 of the babies were at risk for developmental delay identified by the Denver II Test (n = 14, 82.4%). For the developmental areas analyzed by the test there was statistically significant difference in language area.

Conclusion: The babies aged up to 12 months with PRS in this study presented risks for delay in neuropsychomotor development in language, gross motor, fine motor-adaptive, and personal-social aspects, and this finding should be considered to set goals in family orientation and intervention.

Keywords: Child development; Language; Language development; Occupational therapy; Pierre Robin sequence.