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Abstract:
This minor thesis presents a statistical analysis of the palpatory assessment of the inherant cranial motion of twenty infants under 6 months of age. An acceptable degree of inter-rater reliability was achieved. There was a 97.5% agreement on the presence of somatic dysfunction and a 90% agreement on the severity of the restriction of motion.
The measurement of sucking pressures of a separate cohort of 25 infants disclosed a great variety of pressure and pattern. These pressure recordings are presented. The conclusion reached was that it would not be possible to use sucking pressure as a gold standard.
The estimation of the fat content of breastmilk, by simple centrifuge method, is a reliable measure that is easily obtained. Estimations from six infants who were feeding normally demonstrate that it provides a gold standard against which patient outcomes can be measured.
A pilot study of six infants is reported on. The difference between pre- post feed fat estimations of breastmilk was small in infants with a dysfunctional suck. Following osteopathic treatment the difference between pre- post feed fat estimations were comparable with the fat estimations from the breastmilk of infants who were feeding normally. The results are encouraging enough to warrant extending this to an age- and sex-matched case-control study.
Key words: Inter-rater reliability, inherant motion, palpatory assessment, infants’ sucking pressure, breastmilk fat estimation, osteopathic treatment.
The following articles were published relating to the study:
- The osteopathic diagnosis & management of infants with sucking problems
- Journal of the New Zealand Register of Osteopaths 1991 5:2 2-5
- Report of an Inter-rater Reliability Study of the inherant motion of Cranial Bones Australian Journal of Osteopathy 1996 8:2 4-7
- Osteopathic treatment of infants with a sucking disorder
- Journal of the American Academy of Osteopathy 1998 8:2 25-32
- Pilot study: assessment of sucking pressure in normal infants
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- Australian Journal of Osteopathy 1999 10:1 6-14
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