[Prognostic value of Doppler ultrasound blood flow measurements in the anterior cerebral artery of premature infants].

The relationships between doppler-sonographic determination of systolic, diastolic flow velocity and pulsation index in the A. cerebri anterior and developmental outcome at 12 month of age were studied by means of multivariate variance and discriminance analysis. The study involves 92 preterm infants, in whom flow measurement were performed in the first 3 days and the second week of life. The influence of additional perinatal risk factors like Apgar score, blood gas values and type of intensive care were taken in consideration: Doppler-sonographic flow parameters were found to be necessary coefficients of statistically significant discriminant functions, which differentiate between infants with normal or delayed psycho-motoric development or cerebral palsy. However, in comparison to the other risk factors their weight for differentiation is low. Parameters of immediate postnatal adaptation like apgar score and blood gas values decide quality of developmental outcome in infants with as well as without ultrasonographically proven neonatal brain damage. In infants with neonatal ventricular hemorrhages only a distinct influence of immaturity was observed additionally.