Paediatric oral sensorimotor interventions for chewing dysfunction: A scoping review.
Erin Wilson, Meg Simione, Lydia Polley
PMID 34423521WHAT IT FOUND
Most studies on oral sensorimotor treatments for children's chewing problems used multiple interventions at once, making it impossible to know which part helped.
Evidence is mostly limited to children with cerebral palsy, and results across the 21 included studies were inconsistent.
Key findings
01Every one of the 21 included treatment studies used more than one intervention modality, often combining five or six different methods.
02The evidence base is heavily skewed toward children with cerebral palsy, who were the subject of 11 of the 21 studies, while other populations had very few participants.
03Outcomes across the studies were variable, with some showing improvement and others showing no change or reporting only descriptive statistics.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The review is limited to English-language publications and excludes grey literature, which may bias the findings. The heterogeneity of study designs, populations, and outcome measures prevents a direct comparison of effectiveness between different interventions. The exclusion of appliances and purely behavioural approaches limits the scope of the findings. Many included studies were small or lacked control groups, reducing the certainty of the evidence.
Declared interests
None of the authors have a personal or financial interest to declare.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that oral sensorimotor exercises alone are effective for chewing dysfunction. Every study in this review combined these exercises with other interventions, so the contribution of the exercises themselves cannot be separated from the rest of the treatment plan.