The Brigance Assessment Of Individual Neurodevelopment In Young Children With Sickle Cell Disease- 2

A preliminary study was conducted involving 88 three-year-old children with sickle cell disease (SCD) who were followed at the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital Sickle Cell Center. They were offered developmental screening with the Brigance Preschool Screen-II test during their regular clinic visits from January 2006 to August 2008. Data from this work showed that 50% of 3 year old children with SCD had low developmental screening scores. In addition, the low scores were found to be associated with less parental education and with speech deficits. However they were not associated with sickle cell genotype and hemoglobin level. The primary goal of this study is to prospectively administer Brigance Preschool Screen -II to 3 year old children with SCD and 3 year old children without SCD who come from similar socioeconomic backgrounds and compare the results between the two groups.