Communication skills in children aged 6–8 years, without cerebral palsy cooled for neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy

We assessed communication skills of 48 children without cerebral palsy (CP) treated with therapeutic hypothermia (TH) for neonatal hypoxic-ischemic encephalopathy (HIE) (cases) compared to 42 controls at early school-age and examined their association with white matter diffusion properties in both groups and 18-month Bayley-III developmental assessments in cases. Parents completed a Children’s Communication Checklist (CCC-2) yielding a General Communication Composite (GCC), structural and pragmatic language scores and autistic-type behavior score. GCC ≤ 54 and thresholds of structural and pragmatic language score differences defined language impairment. Using tract-based spatial statistics (TBSS), fractional anisotropy (FA) was compared between 31 cases and 35 controls. Compared to controls, cases had lower GCC (p = 0.02), structural (p = 0.03) and pragmatic language score (p = 0.04) and higher language impairments (p = 0.03). GCC correlated with FA in the mid-body of the corpus callosum, the cingulum and the superior longitudinal fasciculus (p < 0.05) in cases. Bayley-III Language Composite correlated with GCC (r = 0.34, p = 0.017), structural (r = 0.34, p = 0.02) and pragmatic (r = 0.32, p = 0.03) language scores and autistic-type behaviors (r = 0.36, p = 0.01).