Respiratory distress syndrome: perinatal prediction of one year development outcome.

A number of perinatal variables were entered into multivariate regression analyses to determine which variables predicted the one-year Bayley Mental and Motor scores of 46 infants surviving the respiratory distress syndrome. Significant predictors were gestational age, 5 minute Apgar scores, obstetric complications, duration of IPPV and intensive care. Although gestational age was the strongest single predictor of developmental outcome, its predictive power was enhanced by the addition of the other significant perinatal variables. A greater number of the RDS infants received low motor scores as opposed to low mental scores, suggesting that intervention efforts with this group might focus on the development of early sensorimotor skills.