PURPOSE: to define the profile of children attended in the speech therapy department of the high risk children clinic in Franca/SP. METHOD: it is a cross-sectional descriptive study and contemporary, performed by consulting the records of 62 infants treated during 2010. RESULTS: the results showed that the majority of the sample consisted of male newborns, premature infants, with an average of 32 weeks gestational age, low birth weight and appropriate intrauterine growth, with average weight of 1,774 grams, using probes for food, and the most widely used is parenteral; associated with ingesting milk formula, with the presence of reflexes of searching, sucking, biting and gap. The average number of weeks that babies took to switch to oral feeding was three weeks. The average speech therapy sessions received was seven stimulations. It was found that the issues that interfere with the newborn transition to the oral feeding only are exclusively prematurity and weight classification. CONCLUSION: the data obtained in this study point to the effectiveness of speech therapy intervention in the early stimulation of sucking in newborn pre-term, in relation to the global baby development. Early stimulation of speech therapy in newborn preterm infants is critical for an adequate and nutritious feeding.
Speech; Language and Hearing Sciences; Infant; Newborn; Infant; Premature
