Quantitative Assessment of Sucking for Early Diagnosis of Brain Injury in Infants at High Risk

This research will address the current lack of objective tools for the reliable assessment of oral sucking and feeding in clinical practice, and the insufficient evidence that relates early measures of abnormal sucking activity with the underlying neurological impairment.

The main goal of this study is to quantitatively assess the sucking and feeding activity of infants at high risk of neurological impairment (preterm infants and term infants at risk of abnormal neurodevelopment) during oral sucking and feeding and correlate it with their underlying neurological impairment for the early diagnosis of brain injury. We aim to study three groups of infants who are inpatients on the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Boston Children's Hospital (BCH), the NICU or Newborn Nursery at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), the Special Care Nursery (SCN) or Newborn Nursery at Winchester Hospital as follows: (i) group A consisting of preterm infants (gestational age of <37 weeks), (ii) group B consisting of term infants admitted to the NICU at BCH and BIDMC for therapeutic hypothermia who are at risk of developing hypoxic ischemic injury (HIE); admitted with concern for neonatal stroke; seizures of unknown etiology; and those admitted to the NICU, SCN or Newborn Nursery at BCH, BIDMC and Winchester Hospital at risk of abnormal neurodevelopment such as those with hypoglycemia or neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) and; (iii) group C consisting of healthy term infants admitted to the NICU, SCN or nursery who had an initial uncomplicated postnatal course that will serve as the control group. Additionally, those infants who have MRI of the brain for any reason during the course of their hospital admission will also be included in the study and allocated to the appropriate group accordingly.