Exploring Techniques To Help The Premature Infant Transition To Oral Feeding

Abstract

Premature infants are subject to experiencing many complications as they are underdeveloped and require special care. One issue they experience are feeding difficulties and often have to be started on tube feeding. This integrative review aimed to explore different techniques to help the premature infant transition from tube feeding to oral feeding and evaluated the effectiveness of those techniques. A literature search using the databases CINAHL and Medline were used and seventeen articles from 2018-2023 were examined. Two techniques were discussed: non-nutritive sucking (NNS) and oral motor stimulation (OMS) and various variables were assessed to determine how effective they were on the premature infants and their readiness to transition to oral feeding. Both techniques were shown effective and showed positive results on the different variables that were evaluated. The results demonstrate that new mothers and nurses can use these techniques; however, a limitation to the studies was that there were more randomized studies compared to longitudinal studies.