Healthy preterm infants: global motor coordination and early intervention

Abstract

Introduction: Studies recommend a participation by preterm children (PT) in Early Intervention Programs (EIP), as the coordination dysfunctions appear to occur more frequently in premature school children. Objectives: Describe the global motor coordination (MC) in PT children that participate in an EIP; verify the difference in MC between the sexes and correlate the coordination results of PT children and those with gestation age (GA) and the birth weight (BW); and compare the results of MC between PT children and full-term children (FT). Materials and methods: 57 children (5-6 years old) – 20 PT that participate in EIP, and 37 FT. For the analysis of MC, it was used the Körperkoordination für Kinder (KTK) – Test of Body Coordination for Children. To the comparisons, it was used independent-samples T-test and the Mann-Whitney test (α = 0.05), and the Pearson correlation to verify the influence of GA and BW in the coordinated results. Results: 80% of the PT children presented normal MC; the girls demonstrated a better performance on the tasks balance beam and lateral jumps and with regard to the MC corresponding to the sum of the gross scores on the tasks; the GA and BW did not influence MC; and, there was no difference between MC in PT and FT children. Conclusion: The PT children presented, in their majority, satisfactory levels of MC, and the girls presented better results. In addition, the GA and BW did not interfere in the MC results. Lastly, there was no difference in the coordination performance between PT and FT children.