A uniquely focused program at Totally Kids Rehabilitation Hospital has shown to have a dramatic positive impact on newborns with delayed motor skills, often related to challenges associated with an inability to feed properly.
Conducted as part of the hospital’s Totally Infant’s Program (TIP), the five-year study exposed infants with feeding difficulties to three hours a day of speech, occupational and physical therapy, all designed to allow these newborns to gain full functional progress at the same rate as typical infants who don’t have these inherent challenges. More than 170 infants who have come to Totally Kids from a hospital’s NICU participated in this study whose impressive results were presented at the annual meeting of the Association of Academic Physiatrists.
“Many infants who come to us are developmentally behind what would be considered the norm in addition to their inability to feed well,” said Totally Kids Medical Director of Rehabilitation Thaddeus Wilson, M.D. who oversaw the study. “While a NICU and children’s hospitals do an excellent job of taking care of infants’ acute medical problems, the nursing staff and therapists at hospitals are not always able to spend as much time as needed working with these infants on feeding. That’s where we come in.”
Using the industry-standard Bayley Scale-4 of Infant and Toddler Development as its benchmark, the interdisciplinary program at Totally Kids proved to not only dramatically improve feeding but significantly improve the infants overall development in areas such as motor skills and cognitive behavior. As it relates to feeding specifically, 94 percent of the infants in this study achieved 100% oral feeding without the need of artificial tubes and devices.
“The importance of these results and of what we are continuing to do at Totally Kids cannot be overstated,” said Dr. Wilson. “There is a direct correlation between a delay in feeding skills and other problems which, if not addressed, often likely have long-term effects and impact a child’s growth, development and chance to live a normal life.”
Opened in 2019 to fill a clear gap in the healthcare system, TIP provides 24-hour family-centered care, appropriate stimulation and specialized therapy designed to speed up the development for babies born preterm and gives them the best chance of success. At Totally Kids families can stay at the bedside overnight and are encouraged to work with the staff to improve the infant’s development, optimize the feeding regimen and shorten their hospital stay. As such, Totally Kids has become the place where parents can feel confident that their newborn will receive not only the medical care they need to transition safely to home, but also the customized therapy and warmth necessary to accelerate all aspects of development.
A wide range of infants are served through the TIP program, including those confronting: complications of prematurity, feeding and swallowing difficulties, neurological disorders, pulmonary disorders, chronic lung disease or airways anomalies (ventilator dependent), gastrointestinal disorders, developmental delay, Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome, chromosomal or genetic disorders, heart and other organ transplant, cardiac disease and other medically-complex conditions
For more than 50 years Totally Kids has been a national leader in providing personalized rehabilitation and habilitation services for children with a family-centered emphasis. Programs include acute pediatric rehabilitation, subacute care for children with clinically complex conditions, the innovative “Totally Infants Program” for the care of infants who are ready to transition from a NICU but not yet ready to go home and Circlebrook Intermediate Care for medically fragile children. totallykids.com.
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