As life saving techniques continue to improve, neonatologists (doctors who specialize in caring for newborns) are able to save smaller and smaller babies. Once these extremely small infants are released from the hospital and their parents' immediate concerns are eased, other troubling issues remain. Most parents want to know if their child will grow to a normal height and weight, or always will be small.
When they become children, very small babies tend to be more underweight and shorter than their full-term and normal birth weight peers. Many undergo extensive evaluations for growth failure ‚ and it is rare to find any abnormality. Despite an adequate diet and lack of any specific cause, these children just seem to be small.
As more and more of these children survive infancy, doctors have been able to follow them into adulthood. As with normal birth weight children, the extremely low birth weight children undergo a growth spurt when entering puberty. By age 14 most have caught up with their normal birth weight peers.
Taken as a group, by the time the extremely low birth weight children reach early adulthood, their average weight and a height consistent with their parents' height and weight.
This information should be reassuring for both parents and the doctors who care for these children. It just takes time for extremely low birth weight infants to catch up with their normal birth weight peers.
Archives of Disease in Children, 6/04
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