The after-history of premature infants: With Special Reference to the Effect of the Birth Weight on the Weight Chart.

Hess (1934) in an extensive and careful study of the development of prematurely-born children (which he defines as weighing five and a half pounds or less at birth, irrespective of the duration of gestation) compares the weight of prematurely-born children at various age periods with that of their full-term siblings, and comes to the conclusion that the former consistently weigh less than the latter until the age of four, after which they conform fairly closely to the weight curves of the full-term brothers. He also showed that those babies in the series which are very small at birth gain weight relatively less rapidly than larger babies in the series of the same sex. He also states that the curve for increase in height in the premature series lags behind the curve of the full-term siblings in the same way as the weight curve. How far the present figures agree with these results will be seen in the tables to follow.