Tag Archives: enteral feeding

Should we feed insulin to preterm babies?

This was an idea I had not heard about prior to seeing this newly published trial (Mank E, et al. Efficacy and Safety of Enteral Recombinant Human Insulin in Preterm Infants: A Randomized Clinical Trial. JAMA Pediatr. 2022). The introduction … Continue reading

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Neonatal Updates

It’s a long time since I did one of these, but there were several publications that I thought warranted a quick comment. Abbey NV, et al. Electrocardiogram for heart rate evaluation during preterm resuscitation at birth: a randomized trial. Pediatr … Continue reading

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Breast milk fortifiers, a new systematic review

A systematic review has just been published which compares the outcomes of milk fortification with bovine-milk derived fortifier and human-milk derived fortifier. (Grace E, et al. Safety and efficacy of human milk-based fortifier in enterally fed preterm and/or low birthweight … Continue reading

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When should we start Parenteral Nutrition?

Following on from the previous post: This all brings me to a larger and very thorny issue, which is whether we should even be routinely starting parenteral nutrition (PN) immediately after birth at all! I hate to discuss this, as … Continue reading

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How much should we feed babies?

Surely after 60 years of neonatal intensive care, we have figured out what volume of milk to give to small preterm babies? Our local feeding protocol uses a standard of 160 mL/kg/d, which we will increase to 170 mL/kg/d if … Continue reading

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Where does sepsis come from?

One of the findings of the recent SIFT trial was that although the babies in the fast feeding group had shorter duration of parenteral nutrition, TPN, (and presumably of central lines), they did not have less late-onset sepsis, LOS. Why … Continue reading

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How fast to feed?

One of the recurring themes in this blog is that good, large enough, prospective RCTs do not necessarily reproduce the results of prior smaller trials, and often do not reproduce the findings of observational studies. Specifically, I have mentioned previously … Continue reading

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Breast Milk is good for you; does it matter how you get it?

The benefits of human, especially mother’s own, breast milk are unambiguous, but is expressed breast milk as good as direct breast-feeding? A new cohort study from Canada (Klopp A, et al. Modes of Infant Feeding and the Risk of Childhood … Continue reading

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It doesn’t make much difference how often we feed babies

Over the years there have a number of studies comparing two different feeding regimes. Most recently there has been a comparison of 2 hourly vs 3 hourly feeds and a comparison of feeds every 3 hours compared to 4 feeds … Continue reading

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Growth in the VLBW; could do better!

Among over 300,000 VLBW infants in the Vermont Oxford Network database between 200 and 2013, the weights at discharge were plotted against the Fenton percentiles. Horbar JD, et al. Weight Growth Velocity and Postnatal Growth Failure in Infants 501 to 1500 … Continue reading

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