Swallow Study
Baby Henry’s medical providers want to make sure he’s not silently choking and protecting his airway when he eats from a bottle, so they had us do a really cool test called a Swallow Study. They can visually follow the path of the milk ingested via X-rays.
The study was conducted at the Lehi campus of Primary Children’s hospital.
We headed to the Imaging / Radiology center, and my phone wasn’t working properly since the walls are lined with lead to shield from the radiation.
They had me wear a lead weighted apron to protect my organs and neck. Our Speech and Language Pathologist mixed a few bottles of sweet liquid with barium, which would show as a dark color on the imaging. She prepared various nipple flow rates for in case we needed a faster flow or to try out thickened liquid.
We put Baby in a high chair of sorts, and they had the x-ray machine pointing to the side of his face. I was too short to reach Baby to feed him, so they brought a stool for me. Baby would not accept the bottle cold, so we took some time warming it.
While I fed Baby forward facing, the radiologist and SLP evaluated him from the real time X-ray video on screen. They showed me the feeding tube and the path leading down his esophagus keeping the sphincter open. We wanted to see the milk follow the feeding tube path, pool around the area of the back of the cheek, and swallow before it went down the throat.
The SLP had us try a faster flow nipple (the level T for transition), and also tried a mildly thickened liquid with a level 2 nipple. These tests on X-ray were recorded and then analyzed with me there so they could explain their findings.
Baby is ready for the Transition flow nipple! He works too hard trying to extract from the slower Preemie level. However, sometimes there’s a slight delay in his swallow where the liquid isn’t swallowed until it’s partway down the throat, which results in coughing or funky breathing. With the thickened liquid he did his best volume and timing, so the SLP also said we could work with our feeding therapist to decide if we want to trial thickened feeds.
The liquid he drank doesn’t have much in the way of nutrients, so they let me use an empty consultation room to set up my bottle warmer, enteral feeding pump, and do an entire feeding session with him.
The feeding pump finished right before we entered the freeway to go home.
