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Objectives: Most preterm infants experience oral feeding disorder. Sucking is the most appropriate way for oral feeding, but it may be immature in preterm infants. Regarding the increased risk of feeding problems in preterm infants, investigating and monitoring their sucking patterns to present appropriate and timely intervention is recommended The current research aimed to report the design of an instrument for measuring the suction pressure in preterm infants through a pilot study. We also checked the validity and reliability of the instrument. Methods: A pilot study was conducted to measure the validity and reliability of this instrument. First, the instrument was developed, and in the next step, discriminant validity, test-retest reliability, and comparison in terms of sex were investigated by measuring the suction pressure of 20 full-term and 15 preterm infants. The Mann-Whitney U test and Wilcoxon test were used to establish the discriminant validity, comparison in terms of sex, and test-retest reliability in SPSS v. 23 software. Results: Two groups showed a significant difference in the suction pressure (P<0.001) to support the discriminant validity of the instrument. We obtained satisfactory values for the test-retest reliability in two groups (r=0.97, P<0.001). Boys and girls did not significantly differ between full-term (P=0.9) and preterm infants groups (P=0.5). Discussion: Performing the pilot study on 35 infants through an infant sucker tester proved the instrument’s discriminant validity and test-retest reliability. However, conducting the studies with a larger sample size is essential to make this instrument available commercially.

Introduction. Due to the prevalence of dysphagia in patients with Parkinson's disease (PD) and its complications such as aspiration pneumonia, which is the main cause of death in these patients, PD-related disability can be prevented by early diagnosis and treatment of dysphagia. Objective. The present study was aimed at investigating the frequency of dysphagia in PD patients. Materials and methods. This cross-sectional study included 150 PD patients visiting a Neurology Clinic. The severity of PD was determined based on the Unified Parkinson Disease Rating Scale (UPDRS) and modified Hoen and Yahr (HYS) Scale. The Munich Dysphagia Test-Parkinson's disease (MDT-PD) questionnaire was used to assess dysphagia. Comparisons were made using generalized Fisher exact, Chi-square, ANOVA, and KruskalWallis tests. Predictive factors were analyzed using logistic regression. Statistical analyses were performed at significance level of 0.05. Results. Out of all 150 patients referred to the Clinic, the prevalence of dysphagia requiring attention was 25.3% (n = 38). The patients of the three groups according to the MDT-PD (no noticeable dysphagia, noticeable oropharyngeal, and dysphagia with aspiration risk) had a significant difference only in terms of the PD duration (p 0.001). In the predicting of dysphagia, the longer PD duration (p = 0.011) and homemaker occupation (p = 0.033) were protective factors, while female gender was a risk factor (p = 0.011). Conclusion. The prevalence of dysphagia requiring attention in the studied patients was 25.3%. It decreased with the longer duration of the disease, and its prevalence was lower in homemaker patients, while the odds of dysphagia was 5.8 times higher in women than in men.

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Objectives: The present study aims to compare acoustic voice parameters in patients with vocal cord nodules, polyps, and normal subjects. Methods: In this cross-sectional case-control study, the participants were selected by convenience sampling, including 30 patients with vocal polyps for the first group, 38 patients with vocal nodules for the second group, and 42 participants without voice pathologies as the control group. For each group, participants were examined by a speech and language pathologist (SLP) using an Endo-vision laryngoscope. Acoustic voice parameters were measured by MDVP software in Visi-Pitch; then, these parameters were compared in groups in terms of sex. Results: Three groups showed significant differences in terms of fundamental frequency (P<0.001), jitter (P<0.001), shimmer (P<0.001), and noise-to-harmonic ratio (NHR) values (P<0.001). Women in three groups had the substantial differences in terms of fundamental frequency (P<0.001), jitter (P<0.001), shimmer (P<0.001), and NHR (P<0.001). For men, the three groups showed a significant difference for jitter (P<0.001) and shimmer (P=0.001), but for NHR (P=024), and fundamental frequency (P=0.93) no signification difference were observed. Discussion: It seems that the existence of benign mass lesions, such as vocal cord nodules and polyps affects the acoustic parameters of the voice. The measurement of acoustic voice parameters may help us to differentiate between the voices of normal people and patients with vocal cord nodules and polyps as a supplementary assessment in clinical procedures.