Clinical and radiological profile of children with global developmental delay and intellectual disability

Abstract

The inability to meet developmental milestones within the projected age range is referred to as global developmental delay. This refers to a severe delay in 2 or more developmental domains in children 5 years age or younger. Gross and fine motor skills, speech and language, cognitive, personal-social, and daily activities are all developmental domains. Intellectual disability (ID) refers to issues with general mental capacities that affect both intellectual (such as learning and reasoning) and adaptive functioning. GDD is predicted to affect 1-3% of children globally. Material and Methods: All children with global development delay/intellectual disability who came to the pediatric neurology clinic from January 2020 to November 2022 were included in the study. Socio-demographic data, clinical and radiological profiles of the patients were studied and results were analysed .Results: Out of 117 patients who came to the neurology OPD, 40 patients had developmental delay.The MRI reports of 10 patients were normal while 29 (74%) patients had an abnormal MRI findings.26% of the patients had cortical malformations while 16% had sequelae of HIE and 2 patients (6.6%) had down’s syndrome.4 patients had sequelae of bilirubin induced neurological deficit while 2 showed sequelae of hypoglycemic insult.11 patients had other findings which could not be put under any major group. Conclusion: This study showed that cranial MRI is a useful tool for assessing pediatric population with global developmental delay or intellectual disability and can have a fairly high success rate if the right patients are chosen.