Development of feeding skills in preterm infants: a critical literature review/Desarrollo de habilidades de alimentación en niños prematuros: una revisión crítica de la literatura

Infants born prematurely have problems in developing feeding skills due to their immaturity. To describe this, a critical review of national and international literature was carried out from May to September 2016. The information was reviewed from Scielo, Pubmed and Cochrane, and also specialized journals using the following key words: "Feeding development preterm", "feeding skills preterm infants", "feeding transition preterm", "lumpy food babies", "solid food preterm", "transition solid food infant", "preterm children weaning food", "solids in preterm infants", also searched in Spanish and Portuguese. Publications were included if they shared similar purpose as the present revision, and published in the last 5 years, encompassing articles of systematic literature review or researches which studied preterm children aged between 0 and 10. Studies showed that transition food started earlier in preterm infants, who also showed more feeding problems. It is necessary to have common criteria in terms of assessment methodologies in order to be able to characterize this group in a better way. Parents of preterm infants would benefit from advise and information about developing eating skills, resulting in earlier intervention and management of feeding and eating problems. Keywords: Infant, Premature; Supplementary Feeding; Assessment Debido a la inmadurez que presentan los lactantes prematuros, el desarrollo de habilidades de alimentacion se ve interferido. Mediante la revision sistematica de la literatura internacional y nacional se intento describir este proceso. Se realizo una busqueda entre mayo y septiembre del 2016 en Scielo, Pubmed y Cochrame y revistas especializadas utilizando los descriptores: "Feeding development preterm", "feeding skills preterm infants", "feeding transition preterm", "lumpy food babies", "solid food preterm", "transition solid food infant", "preterm children weaning food", "solids in preterm infants", tanto en espanol como en portugues. Se consideraron publicaciones que tuvieran directa relacion con el objetivo de esta revision realizadas en los ultimos 5 anos, articulos de revision sistematica de la literatura o investigaciones experimentales cuyo objeto de estudio fueran ninos prematuros entre 0 y 10 anos. Las investigaciones mostraron que la incorporacion de consistencias es mas temprana en ninos prematuros que de termino y que presentan mayores dificultades de alimentacion. Se requiere aunar criterios en cuanto a metodologias de e