Summary of each disorder
along with treatments
- Unstable swallowing and sucking and low suction pressure.
- Intermittent sucking.
- High aspiration risk caused due to immature coordination between breathing and swallowing.
- Are fully nurse the baby in the initial stages and sucking, swallowing and breathing movements will get coordinated by around 35 weeks.
- Use kangaroo care and try to get babies practice latching on to the breasts on their own.
- Massage the insides and outside of the baby’s mouth to make them used to the swallowing and sucking stimulus.
- Exercise the baby’s oral cavity to generate negative pressure by gently pressing both cheeks.
- Dysfunction of generating negative pressure as well as compressing nipple in the oral cavity create sucking difficulties.
- Risk of breastmilk or formula flowing backward due to nasal cavity.
- Aerophagia risk.
- Excessive sucking time with less milk intake.
- Breastfeed with care keeping in check the backward flow of milk.
- Maintain appropriate position during breastfeeding.
- Make sure of shielding lips while sucking for babies with cleft lips.
- Use an artificial palate such as Hotz-type Orthopedic Plate for babies with cleft palate.
- Babies having smaller jaws, receding mandible depressed roots of the tongue will sometimes have blocked respiratory path and eventually cause swallowing and sucking disorders.
- Receding mandible, cleft palate, obstruction of airways, and depression of the root of the tongue, can be characterized as robin sequence. Airway obstruction can cause difficulty in generating negative pressure eventually making it difficult for the baby to suck.
- Babies with Robin sequence generally have a U-shaped cleft palate and as a consequence, the backward flow of milk, more often than not, enters the nasal cavity.
- It is important to check whether the airway is blocked or not because the babies who have micrognathia have respiratory disorders.
- It is advised to hold the babies vertically or pronely for effective nursing making sure that the airway isn’t blocked or the baby’s tongue isn’t receding.
- If the baby is having both micrognathia and cleft palate, it is advised to take care of the cleft palate itself.