Retrospective Cohort Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2017. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Clin Pediatr. Feb 8, 2017; 6(1): 24-33
Published online Feb 8, 2017. doi: 10.5409/wjcp.v6.i1.24
Language and cognitive outcome for high-risk neonates at the age of 2-3 years - experience from an Arab Country
Tamer Abou-Elsaad, Hesham Abdel-Hady, Hemmat Baz, Doaa ElShabrawi
Tamer Abou-Elsaad, Hemmat Baz, Phoniatric Unit, ORL Department, Faculty of Medicine, Mansoura University, Mansoura 35516, Egypt
Hesham Abdel-Hady, Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, Mansoura University Children’s Hospital, Mansoura 35516, Egypt
Doaa ElShabrawi, Phoniatric Unit, ORL Department, Mansoura General Hospital, Mansoura 35511, Egypt
Author contributions: Abou-Elsaad T and Abdel-Hady H designed the research, provided the clinical advice and wrote the paper; Baz H supervised the research, contributed to the analysis and wrote the paper; ElShabrawi D conducted the research, contributed to the analysis and wrote the paper.
Institutional review board statement: The study was reviewed and approved by Institutional Review Board of the Faculty of Medicine, Mansoura University, Mansoura 35516, Egypt.
Informed consent statement: All parents/legal guardians provided informed written consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest statement: We (all the authors) declare that we have no conflicts of interest.
Data sharing statement: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Tamer Abou-Elsaad, MD, Professor of Phoniarics, Head of Phoniatric Unit, ORL Department, Faculty of Medicine, Mansoura University, Gehan str., Mansoura 35516, Egypt. taboelsaad@hotmail.com
Telephone: +20-0100-5192300
Received: June 6, 2016
Peer-review started: June 17, 2016
First decision: July 27, 2016
Revised: September 26, 2016
Accepted: October 25, 2016
Article in press: October 27, 2016
Published online: February 8, 2017
Core Tip

Core tip: The aim of this retrospective cohort study was to evaluate the effect of different neonatal risk factors on different language parameters as well as cognitive abilities among Arabic speaking Egyptian children at the age of two to three years and to find out which risk factor(s) had the greatest impact on language and cognitive abilities. The results revealed that Arabic-speaking children who were exposed to high-risk conditions in the perinatal period are likely to exhibit delays in the development of language and impairments in cognitive abilities. The most significant risk factor associated with language and cognitive impairments was prematurity.