General movement assessment as a tool for determining the prognosis in infantile cerebral palsy in preterm infants: a systematic review

Introduction. Cerebral palsy is considered to be the main cause of physical disability in childhood. General movements are an assessment tool in order to predict the neurological and long-term outcome of the newborn. Aim. To analyze the current evidence on the general movements assessment in preterm infants as cerebral palsy prognostic tool. Subjects and methods. Systematic review following PRISMA statements. Databases consulted were: PubMed/Medline, Lilacs, IBECS, Cochrane, PEDro, Cinhal, Sport Discuss, Phyinfo, Academic Search Complete, Web of Science, and SciELO. We included studies that evaluated general movements in the first 20 weeks premature newborns. We excluded studies where the sample submit other pathologies or medication was administered. Newcastle-Ottawa Scale was used to assessment the risk of bias. Results. Ten cohort studies form this review. 2243 premature, with an average of 30.9 weeks of gestation, were analyzed. General movements recording was carried out between 5 and 30 minutes. When there are abnormal general movements, the chances of neurological involvement increase during development, whereas when normal general movements are evaluated, there will rarely be a subsequent cerebral palsy diagnosis. Conclusions. The predictive validity of the preterm general movements assessment is confirmed as a tool to predict cerebral palsy early. Since preterm infants are more likely to trigger abnormal general movements, it is interesting to promote this type of assessment.