[Neurodevelopmental examination of high risk infants (author's transl)].

While the high risk infants' prognosis for normal development has been greatly improved by modern neonatal intensive care, premature birth, low birthweight and perinatal complications involving compromised brain function still represent major risk factors. Different criteria for admission and assessment methods are the reason that recent publications cite neurological sequelae in high risk infants that range from 4.4 to 28%. The need for an effective screening instrument enableing the pediatrician to test and evaluate neurological function, maturation and integrity, is quite obvious. The author has selected a group of neurological items according to results of Touwen's (1976) longitudinal study on neurological maturation in infancy. In addition, Prechtl's (1968) optimality concept was applied in our study. This new standardized neurological examination was used to evaluate 163 high risk infants with a corrected age of 3 and 6 months. The results demonstrate statistically significant differences between the neurological status of full-term and premature infants, and similarly between those with minimal risk and perinatal brain distress. The rather steep increase of neurological optimality scores by age of 6 months implies a high rate of self-repair or catch-up in maturation of the nervous system. We speculate that early extrauterine stimulation of the premature does not accelerate the development of brain function in a similar way as it does other organ functions, but it may slow down maturation.