PREMATURITY AND THE MECHANICS OF THE INFANT HEART

Highlights The differences in the postnatal ontogenesis of the heart in children from one to five years old born prematurely and with low, very low, and extremely low birth weight were revealed. The coexistence of different models in contractile-rotational processes of the left ventricle was demonstrated. Abstract Aim . To expand the traditional ideas about the left ventricle (LV) mechanics formation processes in children born with low, very low and extremely low body weight in the postnatal period during the process of growth and development. Methods. The study was conducted in 237 children aged from one to five years old: 51 children born healthy and full-term (FT), 68 children born with low body weight (LBW) and 118 children born with very low (VLBW) and extremely low body weight (ELBW). The analysis of clinical, anamnestic data, indicators of standard echocardiography and LV mechanics was performed using discriminant analysis. To demonstrate the assessment of remoteness or proximity between clinical groups, the Mahalanobis distance was used. Visualization of the structure distribution of groups in a multidimensional feature space was carried out in the coordinates of the first two discriminant functions (canonical roots, canonical variables) of discriminant analysis. The evaluation of the discriminant functions significance was verified by Wilks statistics. Statistical analysis was performed on a personal computer using the Statistica program (version 12). Results . The most informative criteria for F (8.462) = 100,84 are “body weight at birth” (p = 0.000000), “character of feeding up to a year” (p = 0.000000) and direction of apex rotation (p = 0.0098). Conclusion . The use of discriminant analysis makes it possible to establish a change in the degree of the selected criteria influence on the level of differences between clinical groups, demonstrating fundamentally new aspects of a child's heart mechanics formation in the history of prematurity.