Evaluation of postnatal weight growth in very low birth weight infants.

There is general agreement about the need for longitudinal studies of very low birth weight infants (VLBWI) to evaluate their postnatal growth and to generate distance and velocity charts that allow neonatologists and pediatricians to detect earlier whether a child is not growing adequately. There are no satisfactory growth charts for VLBWI. We analyzed the weight growth of 262 VLBWIs from birth to 2 years of corrected age.