CONCURRENT VALIDITY OF THE BRUNET-LÉZINE SCALE WITH THE BAYLEY SCALE FOR ASSESSMENT OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF PRETERM INFANTS UP TO TWO YEARS.

Objective: To verify the correlation between the areas evaluated by the Brunet-Lézine and the Bayley III scales of preterm infants up to two years.

Methods: The study included 88 children who were divided into 3 groups: Group 1 (1 month to 5 months and 29 days of corrected chronological ages - CCA) with 32 children; Group 2 (6 months to 11 months and 29 days of CCA) with 36 participants; and Group 3 (18 -23 months and 23 days of CCA) with 20 children. The concurrent validity of the Brunet-Lézine scale and the Bayley III scale was calculated using the Pearson correlation or its non-parametric version, the Spearman correlation.

Results: Group 1 showed moderate correlation between the developmental quotient for hand-eye and fine motor coordination (DQE), and fine motor score (ρ=0.448; p=0.01). Group 2 had moderate correlation between the developmental quotient for posture and gross motor function (DQP), and the gross motor score (ρ=0.484; p=0.003, between the DQE and fine motor score (r=0.489; p=0.002), and between the developmental quotient for social reactions (DQS) and the socio emotional score (r=0.435; p=0.008). Group 3 showed moderate correlation between the DQP and the gross motor score (ρ=0.468; p=0.037) and strong correlation between developmental quotient for language (DQL) and the score of language (r=0.890; p<0.001).

Conclusions: The Brunet-Lézine scale showed strong correlation with the Bayley III scale regarding the language domain in Group 3, suggesting its validity to assess the language of children aged between 18 and 24 months.