Maturation of the Coordination Between Respiration and Deglutition with and Without Recurrent Laryngeal Nerve Lesion in an Animal Model.
Ashley Ballester, François Gould, Laura Bond and 8 others
PMID 29476275WHAT IT FOUND
In infant pigs, the delay between a swallow and the next breath grew from day 7 to day 17.
Pigs with a recurrent laryngeal nerve lesion showed a larger age-related change, but the lesion alone did not shift timing.
Key findings
01As pigs matured, the onset of inspiration after a swallow occurred later.
02The lesion group did not differ from controls overall, but the age-related change differed between them.
03Marker placement and nerve identification surgery did not add a treatment effect compared with no surgery.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
No human infants were studied, so the results do not show what happens in patients. The sample was small and unequal because some piglets did not survive the first week. The outcome was the timing of the next breath after a swallow, not aspiration, pneumonia, nutrition or clinical dysphagia. The no-surgery control group was only available in the first litter. The two litters were collected about 6 months apart. The study did not test any treatment or rehabilitation.
Declared interests
The supplied metadata lists NIH extramural research support. The article text does not include an author conflict-of-interest statement.
The easy way to misread this
Do not use this to guide feeding or therapy for human infants with recurrent laryngeal nerve injury. The study measured timing in pigs, the lesioned pigs received no specific treatment or rehabilitation, and the main lesion group comparison was not significant.