Lilia Delgado Paramo: Does exposure to the smell and taste of milk accelerate feeding in preterm infants?

Preterm infants often struggle to coordinate reflexes needed for oral feeding, requiring gastric tube feeding. This bypasses smell and taste, which aid digestion and absorption, hence potentially hindering infants’ feeding progression. We undertook a systematic review to assess whether providing smell and taste of milk with tube feedings accelerates the transition to full sucking feeds in preterm infants. Two authors independently extracted data and assessed risk-of-bias and certainty of evidence, and random-effects meta-analyses were performed. Eight trials (1277 preterm infants) were included. Results showed that smell and taste exposure had no effect on the time to reach full sucking feeds (mean difference -1.07 days, confidence interval -2.63 to 0.50), and there was no effect or no data on other outcomes (adverse effects, parenteral nutrition duration, necrotising enterocolitis). Given these results and the overall low certainty of the evidence, this intervention should only be considered in the context of further research.