BACKGROUND: The objectives of this study were: 1) to detect clinical criteria on the evaluation of dysphagy in preterm newborns; 2) to analyze the association between the functional and the videoendoscopy findings and 3) to show the relevance of the joint work of the Speech Therapist and the Otolaryngologist criteria on the evaluation of dysphagy in preterm syndromic and pathologic newborns. METHODS: The sample comprised fifteen infants born in Maternity Campinas Hospital, Campinas-SP, to whom was requested a Speech Therapist evaluation by the Neonatologist. All the infants were evaluated once by the same Speech Therapist and the Otolaryngologist. The functional evaluation of swallowing considered: a) the extra oral tactile sensibility, b) the intra oral tactile sensibility, c) the nauseous reflex and d) the buccinator movement. The evaluation of the videoendoscopy swallowing analyzed a) the sensibility in the arytenoid cartilage, b) the crying, c) the aspiration, d) desaturation and e) the penetration. The exact test of Fisher was applied for small samples and each hypothesis was tested with significance level of 0.05. RESULTS: At the end of the study, a statistically dependence relation between the variants was noticed: 1) aspiration after pharyngeal phase and penetration (high and low) and 2) extra oral sensibility on the cheeks and the sensibility on the arytenoid cartilage. CONCLUSION: This last result shows the association between a functional finding obtained by the Speech Therapist and a videoendoscopy finding achieved by the Otolaryngologist, that shows clearly the relevance of the team work among these two health professionals.
Dysphagy; Preterm newborns; Swallowing; Speech Therapist evaluation; Videoendoscopy swallowing; NICU
