Children born before 32 weeks of gestation displayed impaired reading fluency, comprehension and spelling skills at 9 years of age.

AIM

Our aim was to study whether prematurity, associated with prenatal and neonatal risk factors, affects specific literacy skills among school children born at a very low gestational age (VLGA) of <32 weeks.

METHODS

The study group comprised 76 prospectively followed VLGA children born between November 1998 and November 2002 at Oulu University Hospital, Finland, and 51 term controls. The median gestational age of the VLGA children was 29.0 (24.1-31.9) weeks. All children were examined at a median age of 8.9 (8.0-9.9) years in Oulu between November 2007 and November 2011. Reading fluency, comprehension and spelling skills were evaluated using standardised tests for Finnish-speaking children.

RESULTS

Very low gestational age children had significantly poorer test results in reading comprehension (median 6.9 vs 8.3, P = .014) and spelling (median 35.7 vs 38.0, P = .013) than term children. Furthermore, VLGA children more often performed below the 10th percentile normal values in spelling (P = .012) compared with term controls. Foetal growth restriction was associated with lower scoring in reading fluency (P = .023) and spelling (P = .004) among VLGA children.

CONCLUSION

Very low gestational age school children performed poorer in reading comprehension and spelling than term children. In addition, poor foetal growth in VLGA children was associated with literacy problems.