According to scientists, the Apgar test given to the baby at the birth may determine whether the kid will do good or not in school

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According to scientists, the Apgar test given to the baby at the birth may determine whether the kid will do good or not in school

According to a new study, the healthy test given to children once they are born may also help predict future school problems n some of these children.

The group of researchers who were involved in the study analyzed data coming from 877,000 Swedish children and what they did was to compare their grades and graduation rates when they were teenagers with their post-birth health and Apgar scores. According to the researchers, the results of the study showed that there was a link between an Apgar score below 7 and future problems in school. From what they said, it seems that a better understanding of the situation may help them determine what early problems in life can lead to problems in school. “It is not the Apgar score in itself that leads to lower cognitive abilities. It is the reasons leading to a low Apgar score that might have an impact on future brain function,” according to Dr. Andrea Stuart, the lead researcher of the study.

For those who do not know, the Apgar test is the test given in the first 1 to 5 minutes after the child was born and the test is used to evaluate the breathing, the heart rates, the reflex irritability, the skin color and muscle tone, each on a 2 point scale. Children who score 8 or more show signs of good to very good health.

From what the researchers discovered in their study, it seems that children who had a score lower than 7 to their Apgar test, had more chances of doing bad in school from a cognitive point of view, than their peers who score more than 7, 8 points in the same test. However, it seems that only 1 in 44 of the children who had such lower scores had to be specially educated, so mothers should not be so concerned just yet. According to Dr. Richard Polin, most children who score 7 on their Apgar test do just fine in their life. Furthermore, both Polin and Stuart agree on the fact that children who scored lower than 7 on their Apgar test should not be stigmatized, because that would do much worse than anything else.

This study was the largest one so far to look at how the Apgar test can tell things about the future life of children. Although the Apgar test has been used for a very long time to determine whether the children need some sort of assistance, it seems that it also has some implications for the long run. Previous studies have been made in relation to what the Apgar tests can say about children, but this one was the largest of its kind to show some sort of a link between lower scores at the Apgar tests and cognitive problems in the future life. The conclusion to which the researchers got was that further studies must be made in order to determine exactly what the link between the Apgar test and cognitive problems really are.

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