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Breastfeeding provides both nutrients and immunities necessary for infant growth. Understanding the biomechanics of breastfeeding requires capturing both positive and negative pressures exerted by infants on the breast. This clinical experimental work utilizes thin, flexible pressure sensors to capture the positive oral pressures of 7 mother-infant dyads during breastfeeding while simultaneously measuring vacuum pressures and imaging of the infants oral cavity movement via ultrasound. Methods for denoising signals and evaluating ultrasound images are discussed. Changes and deformations on the nipple are evaluated. The results reveal that pressure from the infant’s maxilla and mandible are evenly distributed in an oscillatory pattern corresponding to the vacuum pressure patterns. Variations in nipple dimensions are considerably smaller than variations in either pressure but the ultrasound shows positive pressure dominates structural changes during breastfeeding. Clinical implications for infant-led milk expression and data processing are discussed.
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Fluid-Structure Interaction Simulation of Lactating Human Breast
Abstract This study presents a 3-D Fluid-Structure Interaction (FSI) simulation of breastfeeding mechanism to provide a better understanding of the milk flow behavior in the ductal system of the human breast as the breast interacts with the infant's oral cavity. The breast geometry consists of one lobe with three-bifurcation levels. The boundary conditions include: (1) The intraoral vacuum pressure, obtained from the clinical measurements, (2) Dynamic motion of the tongue, nipple, and jaw (maxilla and mandible) motion captured by ultrasound images. Simulation is conducted from the instance of latching and continues for two cycles of periodic tongue motion and in various boundary conditions and mouthing positions. The results from the simulation show that milk removal is not only due to the negative pressure applied by the infant sucking, but also the tongue movement and mouthing and squeezing of nipple and breast, i.e. a positive force deforming the nipple is responsible for the expression of milk. The developed model can contribute to a better understanding of breastfeeding complications due to physical infant and/or breast abnormalities and the design of medical devices such as artificial teats and breast pumps.
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- PAR ID:
- 10112586
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Fluids Engineering
- Volume:
- 142
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 0098-2202
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4045949
