الفهرس 
INTRODUCTIONOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Preterm is defined as babies born alive before 37 completed weeks of pregnancy. An estimated 15 million babies are born too early every year. Prematurity is a risk that is very commonly relates with other disorders. The major medical concerns involving premature infants are the result of under-development of the major organs and primary functions of the human body. It is essential to handle these very fragile infants with extreme care. Many NICU graduates have survived multi-organ disease such as IVH, BPD, ROP, and NEC. However, the increased survival rate of premature infants was not associated with lower complications, and those infants who survived suffered more intensely from severe disabilities, intellectual disability, cerebral palsy, hearing and visual impairments. Preterm infants’ follow-up requires a multidisciplinary approach involving a team of pediatricians, child psychologist, pediatric neurologist, ophthalmologist, otorhinolaryngologist, physiotherapist, medical social worker, and a dietician. Follow-up care service would ensure systematic monitoring of the general health, growth and neurodevelopmental progress to help in early detection thus paving way for early intervention.
The aim of the work was to perform clinical and developmental follow up for the NICU graduates from the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Alexandria University Children’s Hospital from six months till one year corrected age.
The study was carried out on all preterm infants discharged from the neonatal intensive care unit at Alexandria university children’s hospital during six months period from 15/9/2016 to 15/3/2017.
During the 6 months follow up period, 279 preterm infant were discharged from our NICU. 71 cases (25.4%) of them attended to our outpatient clinic from the age of six months till twelve months corrected age, out of them 49 cases (69%) attended all the visits at 6, 9, and 12 months corrected age, which are about (17.6%) of the discharged infants.
The mean duration of stay of