Diseño y construcción de un dispositivo de medición de succión en neonatos

Abstract

The sucking reflex is innate and must function properly in terms of its capacity and coordination with the other reflexes involved in the feeding process, avoiding metabolic, linguistic and neuronal complications, which if not attended to in time can lead to death of the newborn . In Latin America, the most methods used are qualitative and inaccurate, based on subjective evaluation scales such as the escalation of NOMAS (Scale of Neonatal Evaluation of the Oral Engine) and the one established by Virginia Apgar in 1953. In the present study, we describe a new wireless system for the quantitative and objective measurement of the sucking reflex in newborns that allows obtaining the results of different sucking patterns in real time. The measuring system consists of a resistive force sensor (RFP-602e). The sucking data is sent via Bluetooth to a portable computer, in which a program was developed in the MATLAB® programming environment to receive, display and store the sucking patterns. A total of ten term newborns were recruited from The Siloé siglo XXI Hospital, which is attached to the Ladera Health Network, in Santiago de Cali, Colombia. Results show that the proposed system is adequate to measure the sucking behavior of babies, even within a few hours of life, which could help doctors to detect in a timely manner the risk of delayed child development in the future.