NCT04843293

The Effect of Breast Milk Smell on Nutrition in Preterms

The Effect of Breast Milk Smell on Early Feeding Cues, Transition Period to Oral Nutrition and Abdominal Perfusion in Preterm Newborns

• Status: Unknown
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 56 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Selcuk University · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 28 Weeks – 36 Weeks
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

The study was planned to determine the effect of breast milk odor applied during gavage feeding on early feeding cues of preterm newborns, the transition time to oral feeding and abdominal perfusion.

Detailed description

It is known that nutrient odors stimulate the initiation of digestion. However, in preterm newborns who are fed by gavage or parenterally, exposure to the nutrient smell that initiates digestion disappears. For this reason, it is known that odor stimulation is applied to preterm newborns to improve nutrition. It is known that fragrances such as fragrant essential oils, the smell of breast milk, and amniotic fluid have positive effects such as shortening the transition time to oral feeding in preterm newborns, increasing nutritional tolerance and weight gain, increasing hunger symptoms, providing analgesic effect in painful procedures, and reducing hospital stay. However, no study was found to jointly evaluate the effect of odor stimulation with breast milk on early nutritional cues, transition time to oral nutrition and abdominal perfusion in preterm newborns.

Conditions

• Breast Milk
• Digestion
• Nutrition
• Smell Stimulation
• Preterm Birth

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Olfactory stimulation	Newborns in the experimental group will be given the smell of breast milk during 3 consecutive feedings and for 3 days in the morning. Smell stimulation will be started 1 minute before gavage feeding and the application of breast milk odor will continue until the feeding ends. A hand-cleaning researcher will drip 15 drops of breast milk on sterile gauze to apply the smell of breast milk. Sterile gauze dripped with breast milk will be placed as close to the newborn's nose as possible and not in contact with the newborn's skin. After the feeding of the newborn is completed, the application of the smell of breast milk will be terminated and the gauze will be removed from the incubator. A new sterile gauze will be used for each feeding, and these processes will be repeated with each smell stimulation for three days.

Timeline

• Start date: 2020-12-15
• Primary completion: 2021-06-30
• Completion: 2021-09-30
• First posted: 2021-04-13
• Last updated: 2021-04-13

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Turkey (Türkiye)