Prevalence of feeding difficulties in children aged six months to six years who were born prematurely.
Cícero Alaor Kluppel, Amanda Bencke Teixeira da Silva, Daniel Boquai Camargo and 2 others
PMID 40172379WHAT IT FOUND
Feeding difficulties affected 15 of 129 preterm children.
Small-for-gestational-age birth was linked to higher risk. Surprisingly, gestational diabetes and phototherapy use were associated with fewer difficulties, though the authors caution these links may be incidental or confounded by other factors.
Key findings
01The prevalence of feeding difficulties in this preterm cohort was 11.62%, with most cases being mild or moderate.
02Children born small for gestational age had a significantly higher prevalence of feeding difficulties compared to those appropriate or large for gestational age.
03Longer duration of ventilatory support was significantly associated with worse oral motor outcomes, while phototherapy duration showed a weak inverse correlation with sensory-oral difficulties.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
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What it does not show
The study was cross-sectional, so it cannot prove that perinatal factors caused the feeding difficulties. The sample size was relatively small (129 children), which may limit the reliability of subgroup findings. Data on medical history were retrieved retrospectively from medical records, which can be incomplete or inconsistent. The unexpected associations between gestational diabetes/phototherapy and lower feeding difficulty rates may be incidental or confounded by the higher prevalence of small-for-gestational-age infants in those groups. Participants were conveniently selected from a single tertiary hospital, which may not represent all preterm children, particularly those with less severe conditions.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the lower rates of feeding difficulties in children exposed to phototherapy or born to mothers with gestational diabetes as protective factors. The authors state these findings lack literature support and are likely confounded by the fact that small-for-gestational-age infants, who had the highest risk, received less phototherapy.