English summary: CAN VANE (EARLY NEURODEVELOPMENTAL EVALUATION) PREDICT NEUROCOGNITIVE OUTCOME IN PRETERM INFANTS?

Background.

Vane is a recently developed Finnish method for early developmental evaluation of infants aged 1.5, 4 or 8 months. Its predictive value is incompletely known. Therefore, we assessed the accuracy of the method by comparing Vane results to later neurocognitive and motor outcome.

Methods.

Twenty-four preterm infants were examined with Vane at the corrected ages of 1.5, 4 and 8 months. At the corrected ages of one year and three years, the children were re-examined both clinically and using revised Bailey scales.

Results.

The most sensitive items were muscle tone (1.5, 4 and 8 mo), spontaneous posture (1.5 and 4 mo), stepping movements (1.5 mo), leg movements (1.5 mo), standing with support (4 mo), voluntary grasping (4 mo), scissor grasp (8 mo), moving towards a goal (8 mo), and preferring a new object (8 mo). The best prediction was achieved when the four most sensitive items of each evaluation were combined. The specificity of this combination score was 0.83-0.93, sensitivity 0.83-1.0, positive predictive value 0.71-0.86, and negative predictive value 0.92-1.0, when compared with the neurocognitive outcome.

Conclusion.

It is possible to predict neurocognitive outcome early by using a combination score of the four most sensitive items of Vane.