“Many babies with this condition have feeding difficulties,” said Dr. Although this helped Alianna breathe, it got in the way of feeding. In other cases, including Alianna’s, babies hold their tongue inside the cleft on the roof of the mouth.

In Pierre Robin sequence, because the baby’s mouth is so small, it’s common for the tongue to fall backward toward the throat, blocking the airway. Called Pierre Robin sequence, it affects 1 in 3,500 to 8,500 births. Because she continued to have problems, she was transferred to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, where caregivers noted her small jaw and diagnosed her with a much rarer condition that sometimes occurs with cleft palate. Her parents were told that she could leave the hospital once she learned to eat by mouth. Some affected babies can use a special bottle that allows the caregiver to control the flow of milk.īut it didn’t help Alianna-she required a feeding tube that ran from her nose into her stomach. births, makes it difficult for infants to generate enough suction to nurse or drink from a standard baby bottle. Cleft palate, which affects about 1 in every 1,700 U.S. When Alianna was 2 days old, a nurse at the hospital where she was born realized that she had a cleft palate, a gap in the roof of her mouth. “It immediately opens the airway and keeps the baby’s tongue out of the way.” Choo, who began caring for Alianna when she was a few weeks old. The retainer-like device used in the treatment is custom-made for each patient, said Dr.

“The most important thing about this treatment is that babies are able to breathe comfortably right away without surgery,” said HyeRan Choo, DDS, DMD, MS, director of craniofacial and airway orthodontics at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health. The Stanford Medicine Children’s Cleft and Craniofacial Center is the only team in North America to use this approach, which they have offered since 2020. Karina Medina Moya and Jonathan Cervantes, Alianna’s parents, wondered if their firstborn would need jaw surgery.Įxperts at Stanford Medicine Children’s Health offered something better: Alianna received an orthodontic device that immediately repositioned her tongue and gradually stimulated her jaw to grow to a healthy size without surgery. Her tongue was crowded into a cumbersome position that made it hard for her to swallow and often impaired her breathing. She was born in July 2020 with a cleft palate and an unusually small jaw, a condition known as Pierre Robin sequence. When her parents tried to coax her to drink from a bottle, she would wheeze and tire after just a few minutes. In her first few weeks of life, Alianna Cervantes struggled to eat and breathe.

Pierre robin sequence ny