Oral Feeding Competences of Healthy Preterm Infants: A Review

N. Bertoncelli,M. Pugliese,B. Mordini,F. Ferrari,P. Zagni,G. Cuomo,E. Coccolini,C. Mazzi,S. Cattani

doi:10.1155/2012/896257

N. Bertoncelli, M. Pugliese + Show 7 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/896257

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Abstract

Background. With increasing sophistication and technology, survival rates hugely improved among preterm infants admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit. Nutrition and feeding remain a challenge and preterm infants are at high risk of encountering oral feeding difficulties. Objective. To determine what facts may impact on oral feeding readiness and competence and which kind of interventions should enhance oral feeding performance in preterm infants. Search Strategy. MEDILINE database was explored and articles relevant to this topic were collected starting from 2009 up to 2011. Main Results. Increasingly robust alertness prior to and during feeding does positively impact the infant's feeding Skills. The review found that oral and non-oral sensorimotor interventions, provided singly or in combination, shortened the transition time to independent oral feeding in preterm infants and that preterm infants who received a combined oral and sensorimotor intervention demonstrated more advanced nutritive sucking, suck-swallow and swallow-respiration coordination than those who received an oral or sensorimotor intervention singly.

Highlights

With increasing sophistication and technology, survival rates hugely improved among preterm infants admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit
Mizuno and Ueda aimed at establishing normative maturational data for feeding behaviour of preterm infants from 32 to 36 weeks of Postmenstrual age (PMA) and evaluating how the relation between swallowing and respiration changed with maturation
This study demonstrated that the oral feeding skills levels were positively correlated with an infant’s feeding performance, that is. the better the levels, the greater the oral performance and the shorter the feeding duration; the oral feeding skills levels positively correlated with gestational age (GA), that is, the less premature the infant, the more mature his/her skills; and the better the skills, the faster the attainment of independent oral feeding

Summary

Introduction

With increasing sophistication and technology, survival rates hugely improved among preterm infants admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit. Among the huge number of routine caregiving interventions in the NICU, it is the successful initiation of oral nipple feeding and attainment of nutritive sucking competence that appears to be the primary determinant of discharge readiness. Oral feeding is not initiated in preterm infants before 32 weeks of PMA mainly because the coordination of sucking, swallowing, and respiration is not established.

Results

Conclusion