“Aggressive Nutrition” Can Help Premature Babies Develop Faster

03 Jan 2017 --- Retrospective data analysis conducted at MedUni Vienna’s Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine has shown that “more aggressive” nutrition, especially including more protein, brings about a significant improvement in the nutritional status, development, and growth of premature babies.

The tiniest of premature babies – weighing less than 1 kg at birth – often fail to gain very much weight during their long stay in hospital and this impacts upon their subsequent growth.

“Previously we have been extremely careful with the feeding of these tiny premature babies, for fear of causing enteritis,” explains Andreas Repa of the Department of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine at MedUni Vienna/Vienna General Hospital.

“However, our data analysis shows that a new, strategy, based on recent international studies, is much more successful.”

This “new” strategy sees that the premature babies are primarily given more protein, as well as vitamins, electrolytes, calcium, and sugar, via a tube and by intravenous drip.

This helps to make up for the nutritional deficit that these premature babies have because they were delivered before the 28th week of gestation and at a low birth weight of around d 1 kg.

If they had gone to full term, they would have received these nutrients via their mother's placenta as the pregnancy progressed.

The outcome of the data analysis shows that infants fed in this way weighed more at the time of their subsequent discharge from hospital (around 2.5 kg as opposed to the average 2 kg with conventional nutrition) and that they had gained a centimeter more in head circumference and height than other premature babies, who had been conventionally fed.

“This shows that the change in best practice is proving to be very successful,” says Repa.

“These tiny premature babies leave hospital in a more robust state and end up being not much smaller than other children.”