[Retinopathy of prematurity and the "immaturity index"].

GOAL

To find an index which enables one to differentiate any high risk premature newborn of developing a retinopathy of prematurity.

METHOD

Two groups of newborn are studied: 1) all the children under 2550 g at birth time and born between january 1979 and september 1987 and having had a diagnosis of retinopathy of prematurity, 2) all the children who were examined by the author from october 1987 to july 1990.

RESULTS

33 of the 118 children studied suffered from a retinopathy of prematurity. Small gestational age and weight is considered to be high risk as well as the association with necrotizing colitis, intracranial hemorrhage, hyaline membrane disease and/or bronchopulmonary dysplasia, oxygen therapy and sepsis. For all these factors studied p is less than 0.0001. We utilized the multiple regression coefficients to define the "Immaturity Index".

CONCLUSION

The index is very specific in defining any child with no risk of developing the disease. It has a sensitivity of 0.9 in detecting any newborn suffering from a retinopathy over grade 2. It is much more powerful than any biological variable (gestational age or weight, oxygen therapy time) in predicting retinopathies (60%).