630 Neuropsychological Outcome in Congenital Hypothyroidism in an Italian Cohort: the Developmental Questionnaire for Ch (DQCH)

Abstract

Background and Aims Several studies on neuropsychological outcome in early treated children with congenital hypothyroidism (CH). have demonstrated the presence of developmental disorders, in particular motor abilities language, emotions 1.2.3 The aim of this study was to to individuate the most vulnerable developmental domains and which risk factors are significantly associated with a poor outcome. To this end we have developed a developmental questionnaire on CH (DQCH). Methods The DQCH has been created with dichotomous answers giving a score which hinders the dispersion of data and makes it easy to fill-in for a person knowing the child (clinical psychologist, physician, parents). It consists of 49 questions, in 7 domains - motor skills, personal autonomy, language development, social development, behaviour, biorhythms, and success in school. This questionnaire was designed for an easy way to collect data on developmental milestones and neuropsychological outcome in a large cohort of children with CH and their age-matched controls. Results All domains of our questionnaire show major impairments in children with CH than in controls, in particular in personal autonomy for the group with thyroidal agenesis and social development for ectopic glands. Conclusions We hypothesize that children with a more severe outcome are more frequently those of mothers affected by clinical and subclinical forms of hypothyroidism during pregnancy.