Purpose: The global brain abnormality scoring system is widely used to predict neurodevelopmental outcomes in preterm infants. However, its brain volume cutoff values may not directly apply to Korean infants due to cohort-specific differences. This study aims to establish Korean‑specific cutoff values for brain volume measurements and evaluate their association with neurodevelopmental impairment (NDI) in extremely preterm infants.Methods: This retrospective study included infants born at less than 28 weeks of gestation at Seoul National University Children’s Hospital between 2017 and 2022 who underwent term-equivalent age brain MRI and Bayley-III at 18 to 24 months corrected age. NDI included developmental delay, hearing impairment, blindness, or cerebral palsy. New Korean specific cutoff values for corrected biparietal width (cBPW), transcerebellar diameter (cTCD), and deep gray matter area (cDGMA) were calculated, and predictive performance was compared between the original and new systems.Results: Of 99 infants enrolled, median cBPW was 68.8 mm, cTCD was 45.6 mm, and cDGMA was 11.5 cm2. Compared to original global norms, our cohort showed shorter cBPW and cTCD, but larger cDGMA. Multivariate analysis showed that decreased cTCD (adjusted odds ratio aOR, 0.96; 95% confidence interval CI, 0.94 to 0.98) and cDGMA (aOR, 0.86; 95% CI, 0.79 to 0.93) were associated with NDI. The new system achieved a higher area under the curve for predicting NDI than the original system (0.793 vs 0.784).Conclusion: Reduced cTCD and cDGMA were associated with NDI. Incorporating Korean‑specific cutoff values improved NDI prediction, providing valuable preliminary data for a tailored brain MRI scoring system.
Kim et al. (Sun,) studied this question.