A New Bottle Design Decreases Hypoxemic Episodes during Feeding in Preterm Infants
Compared to standard bottle designs, the MAM Easy- Start™ Anti-Colic bottle helps to overcome the unique challenges of preterm infant feeding.
Thanks to an innovative bottle system, oxygen saturation of premature babies during feeding is significantly improved compared to conventional bottles. The system also increases milk intake and reduces milk loss during drinking.
Breast milk is clearly the best for the baby. However, there are several reasons why breastfeeding sometimes does not work. In such cases, bottle feeding with expressed breast milk could be the best alternative. In the case of ordinary bottle systems, a vacuum often forms in the bottle, which prevents an even drink flow. Babies need a well-developed sucking ability to drink from such a bottle. How- ever, this is often absent from many pre- mature infants. Moreover, bottle-fed babies have a lower oxygen saturation than breast-fed babies and a lower drinking efficiency. The study by Jenik et al. compares bottle systems in terms of efficiency and SpO2 values when feeding premature infants.
The study was carried out with 34 premature babies, who were already entirely orally fed and were no longer receiving oxygen. The babies were fed twice a day. They were fed alternately with a conventional bottle and the new bottle system. For the study, the SpO2 values of the babies were measured 5 minutes before the feed and throughout the entire period of feeding. Efficiency was assessed on the basis of milk intake and milk loss.
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