Background
 Basics
 Calculations

Background

Assessment of growth, feeding skills, and development should be based on a corrected age for preterm infants. Use of the actual date of birth to calculate age will lead to inappropriate assessment and recommendations. Parents report that health professionals frequently fail to take prematurity into account. Please see section on what parents say about things that were not helpful.

Basics

• A full term pregnancy is estimated to be 40 weeks from the mother's last menstrual period.
• The Corrected age (CA) otherwise known as Gestationally Corrected Age (GCA) or sometimes just Gestational Age (GA) is based on the age the child would be if the pregnancy had actually gone to term.
• Chronological age (CH) is a term that is used to indicate the age from the actual day the child was born.
• An accurate EDC (expected date of confinement) corrected age is calculated by using that date as a birth date. For example an infant with an EDC of March 1, who was born on January 1, will have a corrected age of 3 months on June 1.

Calculating Corrected Age (CA) from Chronological Age (CH)

CA = CH - # weeks or months premature

Example:

• Baby J was born at 28 weeks gestation
• He was 12 weeks premature (40 weeks - 28 weeks = 12 weeks = 3 months)
• Today it is 6 months past the day he was actually born (6 months CH)
• CA = 6 months - 3 months
• Baby J is 3 months corrected age

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