Weight Gain of Infants with Robin Sequence Treated Nonsurgically Using the Stanford Orthodontic Airway Plate (SOAP): 1-Year Follow-Up

Objective: To identify weight gain trends of infants with Robin sequence (RS) treated by the Stanford Orthodontic Airway Plate treatment (SOAP). Design: Retrospective longitudinal cohort study. Setting: Single tertiary referral hospital. Patients: Eleven infants with RS treated with SOAP. Interventions Nonsurgical SOAP. Main Outcome Measures : Body weight, Weight-for-age (WFA) Z-scores, and WFA percentiles at birth (T0), SOAP delivery (T1), SOAP graduation (T2), and 12-months old (T3). Results: Between T0 and T1, the weight increased but the WFA percentile decreased from 36.5% to 15.1%, and the Z-score worsened from -0.43 to -1.44. From T1 to T2, the percentile improved to 22.55% and the Z-score to -0.94. From T2 to T3, the percentile and the Z-scores further improved to 36.59% and -0.48, respectively. Conclusions: SOAP provided infants experiencing severe respiratory distress and oral feeding difficulty with an opportunity to gain weight commensurate with the WHO healthy norms without surgical intervention.