Motor development’s curves of premature infants on the first year of life according Alberta Infant Motor Scale

Abstract

Introduction: The motor trajectory of pre-term children is an important indicator of health during infancy, since alterations may be a signal for the need of professional intervention. Objective: To describe percentiles and motor development curves for Brazilian preterm infants in the first year of life, determining the reference values for categorization of motor performance assessed by the AIMS. Methods: Participated in this a cross-sectional study 976 children born pre-term, new-born to 12 months of corrected age. The Alberta Infant Motor Scale (AIMS) was used to assess participants’ motor development. The scores of the Brazilian norms were used as comparison criteria.  Results: Children born pre-term showed lower scores compared to children born full term indicating the need of specific percentile curve for that population. The scores differentiated at P1 to P99 percentiles allowing for the categorization of children with typical development, at risk and with atypical development. At 0, 4, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 moths an overlapping of extremes percentiles (P1, P5 and P10; P90, P95 and P99) was observed, but not in the others percentiles.  Conclusion: The percentiles described indicate that preterm presented lower motor performance than full-term children and AIMS has discriminant power for the clinical evaluation of these children. Developmental curves showed lower capacity for behavioral differentiation in the extreme percentiles.