Promoting Full Oral Feeding in Preterm Infants Less Than 30 Weeks Gestational Age

In the neonatal intensive care unit, the attention of oral feeding of premature infants is far less than that of mechanical ventilation, antibiotics and other medical treatment, the use of parenteral nutrition, etc., and it is often not until the premature infants are enough mature and stable, or even before discharge that the caregivers pay attention to the problem of oral feeding. At this time, the corrected gestational age of premature infants is almost 36 weeks, but in fact the study shows that preterm infants have the ability of self feeding when they are about 32 weeks old. And oral feeding is very helpful to improve their nutritional status, reduce the use of parenteral nutrition and other forms of enteral nutrition, prevent complications and shorten the length of stay. Therefore, this study plans to use a new process to promote oral feeding and to verify whether it is feasible to earlier attainment of full oral feeding in premature infants.

Inclusion criteria

• Preterm infants with gestational age less than 30 weeks
• The parents are positive to treat the infants

Exclusion criteria

• Fetal edema
• Very critical with OI more than 40
• Apgar score less than 5 at ten minutes after birth
• The parents refuse to treat the infants
• Severe IVH (more than grade IV )
• PVL
• Died before oral feeding starts