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

Introduction: Because of increasing the population of premature infants due to improving neonatal care we try to find other independent criteria in addition to birth weight and gestational age to reduce the number of infants who need a retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) screening examination.

Methods: This is a retrospective cross-sectional study, included 150 preterm infants with gestational age of ≤ 32 weeks or birth weight ≤ 1500 g or receives oxygen therapy for more than 2 days, who were examined from the fourth week of life for ROP in Tabriz Al-Zahra hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), from March 2017 to January 2018. All infants with other risk factors such as multi gestational pregnancy, blood transfusion or exchange, phototherapy, underlying disease, cerebral hemorrhage, chronic lung disease and sepsis were excluded from the study. Infants divided to two group ROP (n=47) and non-ROP (n=133) and their 5-minute Apgar score was Apgar score was compared as an independent risk factor. Exploratory data analysis was performed using descriptive measures with independent samples t tests. Kolmogorov-Smirnov tests were used to test the normality of data distribution.

Results: The mean 5-minute Apgar scores were statistically lower in ROP group (5.4±2.3) than non-ROP group 6.2±2.1 (P value=0.041).

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