NEONATAL ANOXIA

[摘要] In a study designed to measure the effect of delayed oxygenation of newborn infants' blood on intelligence in later life, capillary blood oxygen content or saturation was measured at various intervals in the first 3 hours after birth, and in the same individual subjects intelligence was later assessed by Stanford-Binet test. Technically satisfactory data for both variables—blood oxygen content and I.Q.—were available in 243 randomly selected subjects. The distribution of postnatal blood oxygen values shows wide scattering during any finite time interval arbitrarily marked off in the first hour following delivery, but averages for the first 3 successive 5-minute periods of independent respiration rise progressively, the average for the second 15-minute period is higher than for the first, the average for the second half-hour higher than for the first, and by the second hour most infants have stabilized at average adult levels of blood oxygen content. The distribution of intelligence quotients for the group as a whole conforms closely to that of a normal curve.No significant correlation was found between levels of blood oxygen content measured in the first 3 hours after birth and intelligence as gauged by Stanford-Binet testing in early childhood.An incidental finding of this study is the meager value of the Gesell developmental rating of adaptive behavior, measured at approximately 2 years of age, in predicting the Stanford-Binet intelligence quotient as measured at approximately 5 years of age.

[学科分类] 儿科学