The long‐term consequences of periventricular brain damage on language and verbal memory

Sixty‐eight extremely low birthweight children, of whom 41 sustained damage to the periventricular region of the brain in the perinatal period, completed language and memory tasks at 6 years of age. Their performance was compared to that of 20 children, born at term, who were matched to the preterm children in terms of age and socioeconomic status as measured by annual household income. Category fluency, rate of learning, and the retention of a simple prose passage were not impaired after early periventricular damage. Deficits in sentence comprehension and working memory were associated with germinal layer hemorrhage or mild intraventricular hemorrhage plus or minus mild hypoxic‐ischemic damage. In addition to these impairments, a reduced receptive vocabulary and naming difficulties were observed in patients in whom the intraventricular hemorrhage included ventricular dilatation or invaded the parenchyma or in whom there was associated widespread periventricular leukomalacia.