[Prognostic factors of eating function in tube-fed infants and young children]

To investigate prognostic factors for eating function of dysphagic infants and young children and to propose a guideline for more reasonable future treatment, we retrospectively evaluated clinical findings at the initial examination of 51 tube-fed infants and young children who visited our center, and correlated them to the grade of improvement of their eating function after treatment. The patients were divided into good and poor groups according to the abilities of swallowing, and a multiple survival time analysis was performed in the former. The rate of successful tube-extraction during treatment was adopted as indices of improvement. We found that in the poor group the following factors are significantly associated with higher rate of tube-extraction: shorter period of dysphagia prior to the treatment, younger age to start treatment for eating, onset of feeding impairment after 8 months old, and the grade of the severity scores up to 2. In the good group, the children who received treatment by 36 months old had a high rate of tube-extraction. Based on these findings, we proposed a guideline for future treatment.