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Updated: Oct 6, 2025
Author Spotlight: Implications of Non-Nutritive Sucking on Speech Emergence and Infant Development
Published on: April 19, 2024
Predicting Feeding Conditions of Premature Infants Through Non-Nutritive Sucking Skills Using a Sensitized Pacifier
Insights
Premature infants need help developing sucking skills. A new low-cost device accurately measures non-nutritive sucking (NNS) to predict oral feeding readiness in infants, enabling earlier hospital discharge.
Area of Science:
- Neonatal development
- Infant feeding
- Biomedical engineering
Background:
- Premature infants often have underdeveloped sucking abilities, requiring interventions.
- Quantitative measurement of sucking is crucial for assessing intervention efficacy.
- Current methods may not be suitable for extensive studies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To introduce a novel, low-cost device for measuring infant sucking parameters.
- To assess the device's accuracy and ease of use for non-nutritive sucking (NNS) analysis.
- To demonstrate the device's application in predicting oral feeding readiness in premature infants.
Main Methods:
- Developed a device measuring intraoral pressure (IP) and expression pressure (EP).
- Collected weekly NNS data from 137 premature infants (29-36 weeks old).
- Utilized EP and IP signals to predict full attainment of oral feeding (FAOF) status.
Main Results:
- The device provides accurate, low-cost measurement of NNS parameters.
- The developed pipeline successfully predicted FAOF infants' feeding readiness weeks before hospital discharge.
- Data demonstrated the device's utility in monitoring oral feeding ability.
Conclusions:
- The new device offers a robust and inexpensive method for assessing infant sucking skills.
- This technology can aid in the early identification of feeding readiness in premature infants.
- Early prediction facilitates timely intervention and hospital discharge planning.
Abstract:
Due to the lack of enough physical or suck central pattern generator (SCPG) development, premature infants require assistance in improving their sucking skills as one of the first coordinated muscular activities in infants. Hence, we need to quantitatively measure their sucking abilities for future studies on their sucking interventions. Here, we present a new device that can measure both intraoral pressure (IP) and expression pressure (EP) as ororhithmic behavior parameters of non-nutritive sucking skills in infants. Our device is low-cost, easy-to-use, and accurate, which makes it appropriate for extensive studies. To showcase one of the applications of our device, we collected weekly data from 137 premature infants from 29 week-old to 36 week-old. Around half of the infants in our study needed intensive care even after they were 36 week-old. We call them full attainment of oral feeding (FAOF) infants. We then used the Non-nutritive sucking (NNS) features of EP and IP signals of infants recorded by our device to predict FAOF infants' sucking conditions. We found that our pipeline can predict FAOF infants several weeks before discharge from the hospital. Thus, this application of our device presents a robust and inexpensive alternative to monitor oral feeding ability in premature infants.
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