Active Bottle for Home Care of Dysphagic Infants

描述(由申请人提供)： 提出了一种用于吞咽困难婴儿的家庭护理喂养的活性婴儿奶瓶，以促进口腔喂养过程中吸吮、吞咽和呼吸的协调。婴儿神经源性吞咽困难的特点是液体难以主动转运到口腔和胃。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回来接受门诊治疗，以治疗他们的慢性喂养问题。最终，拟议的主动奶瓶将根据机载传感器获得的测量结果，在奶瓶喂养过程中准确地分配牛奶，从而鼓励儿童保持一种“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，美国因出生第一年低出生体重而增加的直接医疗费用超过40亿美元，占婴儿总医疗费用的35%。此外，一旦婴儿出院回家，如果这些喂养问题持续存在，可能会导致严重的健康后果，包括营养不良和智力发育受损。减少因口服喂养困难而去医院就诊的次数可以大大降低医疗保健成本，或许还可以降低以后与喂养有关的健康问题的风险。 第一阶段将专注于家用护理活性瓶的开发和测试，而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。第一阶段将包括设计和建造主动瓶子系统原型；在原型的实验室进行台架测试，以确认系统每个组件的必要性能；以及系统测试，其中具有代表性的传感器数据(来自过去对儿童的测量)将输入到控制计算机并观察系统的响应。我们以在第二阶段开始对婴儿进行测试所必需的计划任务作为结束。

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.