[The assessment of neurocognitive functions in premature infants in the first year of life using Bayley Scales].

AIM: To reveal the differences in neurocognitive development in premature infants and full-term infants in the first year of life.

MATERIAL AND METHODS: The participants were 17 premature infants and 16 sex- and age-matched healthy full-term infants. The gestational age of preterm infants was between 28 and 36 weeks. The Bayley Scales of Infant Development 3rd Edition were used to evaluate neurocognitive abilities in infants. ANCOVA with age as a covariate was used.

RESULTS AND CONCLUSION: Preterm infants performed significantly (p≤0.05) worse than the full-term infants on cognitive scale, receptive language, gross motor and fine motor scales. No significant differences were found between preterm and full-term infants on the expressive language scale. Two-way ANOVA revealed no significant (p≤0.05) differences between female premature infants and full-term female infants on the gross motor scale in comparison to male infants. It has been proposed that the prematurity has a specific, but not a global, negative effect on the neurocognitive development in the first year of life with the gender effect on the development of gross motor skills.