A pilot study of developing the infant sucking tester instrument

Background: Oral feeding disorder is considered the disorder that most preterm infants experience. Sucking is the most appropriate way for oral feeding that may be immature in preterm infants. Regarding the increased risk of feeding problems in preterm infants investigating and monitoring the sucking patterns of preterm infants to present appropriate and timely intervention is recommended for this population. Objectives: The purpose of the current research was to report the design, validity, and reliability of the instrument for measuring the suction pressure in preterm infants through a pilot study.    Methods: The pilot study was conducted to measure the validity and reliability of this instrument. First, the instrument was developed and in the next step, discriminant validity, test-retest reliability, and comparison in terms of sex were investigated by measuring the suction pressure of 20 full-term and 15 preterm infants by this instrument. Mann-Whitney U test and Wilcoxon test were used to establish the discriminant validity, comparison in terms of sex, and test-retest reliability respectively using SPSS (version 23). Results: Two groups showed statistical difference for the suction pressure (p-value < 0.001) for supporting the discriminant validity. We obtained satisfactory values for the test-retest reliability in two groups (r= 0.97, p-value < 0.001). Boys and girls did not show significant difference in full-term group (p-value = 0.9) and preterm infants (p-value = 0.5). Conclusions: Performing the pilot study on 35 infants through an infant sucking tester proved that obtained values for discriminant validity and test-retest reliability, conducting the studies with the larger sample size is essential to commercially make available this instrument.