Can 5-minute Apgar score be considered as an additional independent risk factor for screening of retinopathy of prematurity?

Because of increasing the population of premature infants due to improvingneonatal care we try to find other independent criteria in addition to birth weight,gestationalage to reduce the number of infants who need a retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) screeningexamination.

This is a retrospective cross-sectional study,included 150 preterm infants withgestational age of ≤ 32 weeks or birth weight ≤ 1500 g or receives oxygen therapy for more than2 days,who were examined from the fourth week of life for ROP in Tabriz Al-Zahra hospital’sneonatal intensive care unit (NICU),from March 2017 to January 2018. All infants with otherrisk factors such as multi gestational pregnancy,blood transfusion or exchange,phototherapy,underlying disease,cerebral hemorrhage,chronic lung disease,sepsis were excludedfrom the study. Infants divided to two group ROP (n,47),non-ROP (n,133),their5-minute Apgar score was Apgar score was compared as an independent risk factor. Exploratorydata analysis was performed using descriptive measures with independent samples t tests.Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests were used to test the normality of data distribution.

The mean 5-minute Apgar scores were statistically lower in ROP group (5.4±2.3) thannon-ROP group 6.2±2.1 (P value,0.041).

Apgar score was statistically significant,but in light of the very close resultsobtained,it seems prudent to consider an independent risk factor.