Infants and children with neurological impairment, such as cerebral palsy (CP), often experience abnormal ingestion functions, including oropharyngeal dysphagia and gastroesophageal reflux disease, which led to aspiration-related respiratory complications, morbidity, hospitalization, or death. There is a lack of evidence-based, repeatable, infant-friendly instrumental procedures to assess aspiration-risk in infants with CP or other neurological disorders, with also a lack of clinical assessment measures to support the use of more invasive diagnostic techniques. To this purpose, in the current study we explore the feasibility of lung ultrasound (LUS), to assess lung deaeration possibly related to aspiration during meal, in a cohort of 35 subjects affected by CP or other encephalopathies, and 10 controls in the same age-range. We coupled LUS procedure with meal caregiver administration for each child. Our results support the feasibility of this innovative approach in the clinical setting. Exploratory findings revealed a number of lung abnormalities likely related to abnormal ingestion function in subjects. Subgroup analyses revealed possible differences in LUS abnormalities between CP and other encephalopathies, possibly related to different mechanism of disease or dysfunction. Also, some evidences arose about the possible relationship between such LUS abnormalities and feeding and swallowing abilities in CP or other encephalopathies. LUS showed preliminarily feasibility and effectiveness in detecting meal-related LUS abnormalities in a dynamic manner in the clinical setting. This approach demonstrated usefulness as a potential tool for improving assessment and management in complex care of infants and young children with severe neurological disorders.

Background Children with neurological impairment may have dysphagia and/or gastro-esophageal reflux disease (GERD), which predispose to complications affecting the airways, increasing risk for aspiration-induced acute and chronic lung disease, or secondarily malnutrition, further neurodevelopmental disturbances, stressful interactions with their caregivers and chronic pain. Only multidisciplinary clinical feeding evaluation and empirical trials are applied to provide support to the management of feeding difficulties related to dysphagia or GERD, but no standardized feeding or behavioral measure exists at any age to assess aspiration risk and support the indication to perform a videofluoroscopic swallowing study (VFSS) or a fibre-optic endoscopic examination of swallowing (FEES), in particular in newborns and infants with neurological impairments. Lung ultrasound (LUS) has been proposed as a non-invasive, radiation-free tool for the diagnosis of pulmonary conditions in infants, with high sensitivity and specificity. Methods A RCT will be conducted in infants aged between 0 and 6 years having, or being at risk for, cerebral palsy, or other neurodevelopmental disease that determines abnormal muscular tone or motor developmental delay assessed by a quantitative scale for infants or if there is the suspicion of GERD or dysphagia based on clinical symptoms. Infants will be allocated in one of 2 groups: 1) LUS-monitored management (LUS-m); 2) Standard care management (SC-m) and after baseline assessment (T0), both groups will undergo an experimental 6-months follow-up. In the first 3 months, infants will be evaluated a minimum of 1 time per month, in-hospital, for a total of 3 LUS-monitored meal evaluations. Primary and secondary endpoint measures will be collected at 3 and 6 months. Discussion This paper describes the study protocol consisting of a RCT with two main objectives: (1) to evaluate the benefits of the use of LUS for monitoring silent and apparent aspiration in the management of dysphagia and its impact on pulmonary illness and growth and (2) to investigate the impact of the LUS management on blood sample and bone metabolism, pain and interaction with caregivers. Trial registration Trial registration date 02/05/2020; ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT04253951.

The Authors describe a case of thyrotoxicosis in a newborn presenting with severe tachycardia. The diagnostic and therapeutic approach is also discussed.