What is dysphagia in children? How to recognize dysphagia

Difficulty swallowing in children can cause many dangerous conditions such as difficulty absorbing the nutrients needed for the growth and development of children. Join Tnhelearning.edu.vn to find out the causes, how to handle dysphagia in children!

What is dysphagia?

What is dysphagia?

Dysphagia is a condition in which a baby has difficulty swallowing food or drink. Sometimes it can also cause pain or worse, the inability to swallow food. The disease can affect the ability of the respiratory tract to protect the respiratory tract when swallowing and eating. Difficulty swallowing can also damage the lungs and affect the body’s nutrient supply. However, according to statistics, dysphagia in children only accounts for 1% of the population.

How to recognize dysphagia in children:

• Manifestations in the oral stage: The baby sucks milk weakly, does not want to suckle, refuses to suckle, has a disorder of biting or chewing movements, immature bite or chewing movements, poor ejection and food blocking.
• Swallowing reflex: The child loses the swallowing reflex, delays the stimulation of the swallowing reflex, and does not have the coordination of sucking/swallowing/breathing.
• Pharyngeal stage: When food reaches the pharynx, causing entry into the larynx, the child will show symptoms such as aspiration, choking, regurgitation, and food backlog in the throat. throat.

Causes of difficulty swallowing in children

Causes of difficulty swallowing in children

There are many common causes of dysphagia in children, including:

• Children with cerebral palsy, acquired/traumatic brain damage, other neuromuscular disorders.
• Children with craniofacial malformations, airway defects
• Congenital heart disease , digestive disease, trauma when eating
• Cleft lip or cleft palate
• Babies born prematurely and with low birth weight are also at risk for dysphagia.

How to care for a child with dysphagia

How to care for a child with dysphagia

To make it easier for your baby to swallow, you can use solid products to feed your baby:

• Use flour or cornstarch to help thicken the liquid.
• Adjust liquid consistency using a commercially available thickener product.
• Use gelatin along with cookies, fruit purees, cakes to thicken the liquid.
• Cereal made from rice for children or instant, for children to eat yogurt, whey, …
• Change the texture or size of solid foods by boiling, baking, mixing, mashing or pureeing foods to make them easier to eat.
• Use special feeding tools such as bottles, nipples, spoons, etc.
• Divide into several small meals

Hopefully, the above article has partly helped you understand more about what dysphagia in children is and how to identify dysphagia. Hope you find this information useful and check out other useful articles of Tnhelearning.edu.vn!

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