Recording non-nutritive sucking in the neonate. Description of an automatized system for analysis

A new method for automatic analysis of non-nutritive sucking in newborn infants is described, which uses a specially designed computer program that analyses an analogue signal obtained from a pressure transducer inside a pacifier. Validation is done with four independent methods: electromyogram, visual identification, control of the automatic treatment and comparison of inter-observer results. A high degree of correspondence is shown. The system was applied to 58 healthy full-term neonates. Infants less than 24 h old demonstrated a significantly different sucking pattern compared with the 3-day-old infant. The duration of their bursts was longer (3.7 vs 2.8 s), the frequency of their sucking was lower (1.7 vs 2.0 Hz) and the variability of their sucking pattern was greater. These results also testify to the validity of the method inasmuch as the values for the different sucking parameters are similar to corresponding values presented earlier.