In Reply Regarding our recent article reporting the 2-year outcomes after MIST in preterm infants, Drs Liu and Shi inquire why the BSID-IV was not used for assessment of neurodevelopmental disability. The explanation is that the BSID-IV was published in 2019, which was 5 years after the follow-up assessments were commenced for our study. We do not agree that the PARCA-R, which was used for 83% of our follow-up assessments, is unreliable; evaluation of its performance suggests the opposite. The subjectivity of a parent report of their child’s abilities is unquestioned, but the potential influence of this on the findings of intergroup comparisons in our follow-up study is substantially lessened by the fact that there was blinded assessment within randomized groups.
