The study examined pre-, peri-, and neonatal factors in 271 British infants (weighing less than 1500 grams at birth), 188 of whom survived to 2 years. The study represented an attempt to define those factors which predict normal neurodevelopmental outcome in very low birth weight (VLBW) infants. Surviving infants were seen at 3, 6, 9, 12, and 24 months of age (corrected for gestational age) with follow-up examinations consisting of full physical, neurological, and developmental assessment, and further evaluation when appropriate. Major (such as cerebral palsy, severe hearing/visual disorders, severe developmental delay) and minor (such as epilepsy, partial hearing loss, moderate developmental delay) neurodevelopmental sequelae (NDS) were identified. Seventeen of the demographic, obstetric, and neonatal factors were significantly different between the 21 infants with major NDS and the 167 infants without major NDS. An additional nine infants showed minor neurodevelopmental problems. Three separate methods of multiple discriminant function analyses were performed. Best overall prediction was achieved by the direct entry method which classified 91.5% of infants correctly. The obstetric and neonatal factors which were good indicators of the overall degree of morbidity were hyponatraemia, the need for top-up transfusions, and pulmonary interstitial emphysema. (DB)