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Objectives: Premature infants (born before 37 weeks of gestational age) frequently experience feeding difficulties due to underdeveloped oral motor skills and poor chewing, swallowing, and breathing coordination. In order to improve oral feeding efficiency in these infants, Oral-Motor Stimulation (OMS) has been used in various studies. This systematic review study will aim to assess the effectiveness of OMS for oral feeding in preterm infants., Materials & Methods: The authors will follow the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. They will conduct a search in electronic databases, including PubMed, Scopus, Web of Science, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials in The Cochrane Library (CENTRAL), Medline via PubMed, and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL) for nursing and related healthcare texts without language restrictions from the first month of 1991 to the fifth month of 2024 to achieve the study objectives. All Randomized Controlled Clinical Trials (RCT) examining the effect of OMS on oral feeding in preterm infants will be included in this study., Results: The primary outcome of this systematic review will be oral feeding, and the secondary outcomes will include duration of hospitalization, weight gain, and feeding efficiency. Two independent reviewers will select and extract data for the study. The Cochrane Risk of Bias Tool (RoB2) will be used to evaluate potential biases in the study. Publication bias will be evaluated using funnel plots, Begg's, and Egger's tests. The degree of heterogeneity among the studies will be assessed using the I2 statistic and the χ2 test. Analyses of subgroups will also be carried out. All meta-analyses will be conducted using Stata V.14., Conclusion: This systematic review protocol for preterm infants will aim to promote evidence-based decision-making and support the development of clinical practice guidelines in preterm feeding., Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest., (© 2024 The Authors. Published by Shahid Beheshti University of Medical Sciences.)

Introduction: Problems with the production of sentences with prepositions are one of the most common language problems in people with aphasia (PWA). Structural priming (SP) is one of the theory-based therapeutic approaches to improve these deficits. Although several studies have been conducted on the sentence construction problems of PWA, there is no study on the SP protocol for the production of sentences with Persian prepositions. This study aimed to investigate the effectiveness of SP in the production of these sentences among Persian-speaking PWA., Methods: This study, with a single-subject ABA design, evaluated the efficacy of SP in the production of trained and untrained sentences containing Persian prepositions in four aphasic individuals with agrammatism and investigated the maintenance effects at 4 weeks post-training., Results: Two subjects (A.G. and M.S.) showed notable changes in the production of trained sentences with Persian prepositions (50% to 91.67% for A.G. and 0% to 66.67% for M.S.). This significant improvement was generalized to sentences with untrained prepositions (50% to 91.67% for A.G. and 0% to 83.33% for M.S.). The treatment effects were also maintained in the 4-week follow-up (d2 = 10.3 for A.G. and d2 = 19.06 for M.S.). However, the other two participants only showed a slight increase in these variables after treatment., Conclusion: The findings of the present study revealed that SP for sentences with prepositions could be useful to varying degrees for Persian-speaking PWA with agrammatism and lead to improved language skills in producing these sentences. Overall, individuals with better language skills and cognitive status in early assessments showed better treatment outcomes than others., (© 2022 S. Karger AG, Basel.)

Background: This study is to evaluate swallowing problems (dysphasia) in multiple sclerosis (MS) patients; the importance of using tools that are durable and appropriate is well understood. One of the most trusted tools is the dysphagia in multiple sclerosis (DYMUS) test. The aim of this study was to prepare a Persian version and to evaluate the validity and reliability of the test., Materials and Methods: This methodological study was conducted on 236 MS patients in Southeast of Iran from August 2015 to February 2016. After translation and cultural adaptation of the test in Persian, the validity of this test was determined using expert opinions accordance with the International Quality of Life Assessment Project. In addition, exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was performed with varimax rotation. The confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted and the goodness of fit indices was calculated. Moreover, to test the reliability, Cronbach's alpha coefficient and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) were used., Results: In total, 236 MS patients were included in the study (81 males and 155 females). All the questions in the test's Persian version obtained an acceptable face and content validity (content validity ratio = 1, Scale content validity index/Ave = 1). EFA revealed that the scale has two factors (solid-liquid) with 67.5% cumulative variance. CFA indicated a good fit to the intended two-factor structure, and the ratio of Chi-square to the degree of freedom was 1.79, and the root mean square error of approximation was 0.058. The internal consistency of total test indicated the appropriate level (Cronbach's alpha coefficient = 0.775), and test-retest reliability total questionnaire was found to be ICC = 0.985, indicating its high reliability., Conclusion: The results of this study indicated that the Persian version of the DYMUS questionnaire had good reliability and validity for patients with MS., Competing Interests: There are no conflicts of interest.

Background: The survival rates of preterm infants has increased over the last years, but oral feeding difficulties are the most common problems encountered by them., Objectives: This study aimed at comparing the effects of non-nutritive sucking (NNS) and pre-feeding oral stimulation on feeding skills, length of hospital stay and weight gain of 26-32 weeks gestational age preterm infants in NICU, to determine the more effective intervention., Patients and Methods: Thirty-two preterm infants were assigned randomly into three groups. One intervention group received pre-feeding oral stimulation program and the other received non-nutritive sucking stimulation, while the control group received a sham intervention. Gestational age of infants was calculated during 1, 4 and 8 oral feeding and discharge time from NICU. The infants' weights were measured weekly from birth and at discharge time., Results: Mean gestational age on 8 time oral feeding per day, in 3 groups was not significant (P = 0.282). Although NNS and pre-feeding oral stimulation groups has fulfilled this criterion 7.55 and 6.07 days sooner than the control group, respectively (a result which is of great clinical and economic importance), but the difference did not reach statistical significance. Weight gaining at discharge time in NNS group was significantly higher than control and pre-feeding oral stimulation groups (P < 0.05)., Conclusions: This study revealed that pre-feeding oral stimulation and NNS programs both were effective on oral feeding skills and weight gaining of the immature newborns. Yet, it seems that NNS program was more effective than pre-feeding oral stimulation on weight gaining.

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to measure and compare temporal patterns of nasalization in Persian children with and without cleft palate in three vowel contexts., Methods: A Sample of 14 children with repaired cleft palates with or without cleft lip with moderate to severe hyper nasality and 14 children without cleft palate was chosen as subjects. The subjects were chosen from the ages of 4 to 12 years. The nasal onset interval, nasal offset interval and total nasalization duration were obtained from acoustic waveforms and spectrograms in three vowel contexts using Praat Software. For eliminating the effect of different speed of speech in the cleft palate group and control group, the ratio of nasalization duration was calculated., Results: Total nasalization duration are demonstrated by acoustic signals which shows the total significant different temporal patterns in children with cleft palate and without cleft palate and across the vowel contexts (P<0.000)., Conclusions: Longer nasalization durations in children with cleft palate in comparison to children without cleft palate show the delayed or deviant temporal patterns in children with cleft palate. The duration of nasalization reflecting temporal patterns of the oral-nasal acoustic impedance in children with cleft palate may have an influence on the perception of hyper nasality., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.)