800-Gram Birth Weight Infants
1 Child Development Center, Department of Pediatrics, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37232
2 Child Development & Mental Retardation Center, Department of Pediatrics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195
In Reply.
We welcome the comments of Drs Kilbride and Daily, former teachers of Dr Hoffman. As survival of extremely low birth weight infants has increased,1 more attention has been focused on neurodevelopmental morbidity trends in this birth weight group. Conclusions are hampered by the small numbers in follow-up studies, the lack of standardization of confounding variables across different study sites, and the continuing changes and improvements in prenatal, perinatal, and neonatal care. Drs Kilbride and Daily's early study period, 1980 to 1982, is later than the study period of Dr Bennett et al,2 1977 to 1980.