Active Bottle for Home Care of Dysphagic Infants

描述（由申请人提供）： 本发明提出一种主动式婴儿奶瓶，用于吞咽困难婴儿的家庭护理喂养，以促进经口喂养期间吮吸、吞咽和呼吸的协调。 婴儿神经源性吞咽困难的特征是难以主动将液体输送到口腔和胃。 在口服喂养期间，这些婴儿容易将液体吸入肺部，因此有患肺炎的风险。 一旦出院到家庭护理，这些儿童可能会经常返回门诊治疗他们的慢性喂养问题。 最终，拟议中的主动奶瓶将根据机载传感器获得的测量结果，在奶瓶喂养期间精确地分配牛奶，鼓励儿童保持“最佳”喂养模式。 该奶瓶的目的是为每个儿童实现更有效和更好的个性化家庭护理治疗，从而减少对医院护理的依赖。 1988年，美国低出生体重婴儿在出生后第一年的直接医疗费用增加超过40亿美元，占婴儿总医疗费用的35%。 此外，如果这些喂养问题在婴儿出院回家后持续存在，可能会造成严重的健康后果，包括营养不良和智力发育受损。 减少与口服喂养困难相关的医院就诊次数可以大大降低医疗保健费用，并可能降低以后与喂养相关的健康问题的风险。 第一阶段将集中于家庭护理活性瓶的开发和测试，而在第二阶段，我们将进行人体临床试验，以确定其安全性和有效性。 第一阶段将包括主动瓶系统原型的设计和建造;原型实验室中的台架测试，以确认系统每个组件的必要性能;以及系统测试，其中代表性传感器数据（来自过去对儿童的测量）将输入控制计算机，并观察系统的响应。 最后，我们总结了在第二阶段开始婴儿试验所需的计划任务。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): An active infant feeding bottle is proposed for home care feeding of dysphagic infants to promote coordination of sucking, swallowing, and breathing during oral feeding. Neurogenic dysphagia among infants is characterized by difficulty with active transport of liquid to the mouth and stomach. During oral feeding, these infants are prone to aspirating fluid into the lungs, and are therefore at risk of pneumonia. Once discharged to home care, these children are likely to return frequently for outpatient treatment of their chronic feeding problems. Ultimately, the proposed active bottle will precisely dispense milk during bottle-feeding, based on measurements obtained from onboard sensors, encouraging the child to maintain an "optimum" feeding pattern. The intent of the bottle is to achieve more effective and better individualized home care treatment for each child and, hence, to reduce the dependence on hospital care. The incremental direct medical costs of low birth weight in the first year of life in the U.S. exceeded 4 billion dollars in 1988, accounting for 35% of total health care costs for infants. Furthermore, serious health consequences may result if these feeding problems persist once infants are discharged to home, including malnutrition and impaired intellectual growth. A reduction in number of hospital visits associated with oral feeding difficulty could substantially reduce health care costs and perhaps reduce the risk of later feeding-related health problems. The Phase I will necessarily focus on development and test of the home care active bottle, whereas in Phase II we will conduct human clinical trials to determine its safety and efficacy. The Phase I will consist of design and construction of an active bottle system prototype; bench testing in the laboratory of the prototype to confirm the necessary performance of each of the components of the system; and system testing in which representative sensor data (from past measurements on children) will be input to the control computer and the response of the system observed. We conclude with a planning task necessary to begin testing with infants during a Phase II.