Subjects
leukomalacia, macrocephaly
HYDROCEPHALY, GENETIC SYNDROMES, SYNDROMES, INTRAVENTRICULAR HEMORRHAGE
Research Ethics Committee approval was granted for the study and written parental consent was obtained prior to each infant’s participation.54 very preterm infants (GA at birth <32 weeks) were recruited at the NICU of the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG), Switzerland, from 2017 to 2020, as part of a blinded randomized controlled clinical trial entitled “The effect of music on preterm infant’s brain development” (NCT03689725), registered at register.clinicaltrials.gov. Out of 54 recruited very preterm infants, 28 received a music intervention during NICU stay (PTM), whereas 26 were randomly allocated to the control group with no music intervention (PTC). Exclusion criteria for all babies included major brain lesions detected on the MRI, such as high-grade intraventricular hemorrhage (grade III or IV), as well as micro- or macrocephaly, hydrocephaly, leukomalacia and congenital syndromes. Six initially eligible and recruited preterm infants were finally not included in the study due to a posteriori parental refusal (1 PTM, 4 PTC) or diagnosis of genetic syndromes (1 PTM).Very preterm infants underwent an MRI examination at two time-points: during the 33rd week GA (time point 1) and at term-equivalent age (time point 2). Were excluded from the analysis: infants without the MRI acquisition at both time-points, infants whose MRI protocol acquisition was incomplete at one or both time-points (not comprising a T2-weighted image and/or complete multi-shell diffusion imaging (MSDI) sequence) and infants whose images presented registration issues during pre-processing. The final sample used for the analysis consisted of 40 very preterm infants, from which 21 PTM and 19 PTC. The flow chart of participants’ inclusion process is provided in Clinical characteristics of very preterm infants final sample.Group-characteristics were compared using independent samples t-test for continuous variables and chi-squared test for categorical variables.