Neurodevelopmental outcome of infant cardiac transplant recipients

Abstract

Normal growth and development are indicators of the success of infant cardiac transplantation. The clinical transplant coordinator must be aware of age-appropriate milestones in gross motor, fine motor, language, cognitive, and social skills, so that accurate assessment and early intervention can be instituted. In this review of five cases, gross motor development was the only category with consistently lower scores. Gross motor development did improve in the two cases tested more than once. Length of hospitalization before and after transplantation and use of sedative medications during the waiting period may have affected developmental outcome scores.