In 1977, the American Academy of Pediatrics Committee on Nutrition first stated that the goal of nutritional management of VLBW infants should be to permit the rate of extrauterine growth and the composition of weight gain to approximate that of a normal fetus of the same postmenstrual age, if the infant had remained in utero(1). However, it has become clear that such a goal is more often not r...

This article reviews the historical development of feeding the premature infant in the 20th century. It describes the early work determining the energy requirements of the preterm infant, the evolution of the use of human milk and its fortification for these infants, the development of special formulas for very-low-birth-weight infants and the various techniques/methods utilized including total...

The fundamental principle underlying nutritional support is that intake meets needs thereby ensuring the best outcome, which, in the case of the preterm infant, is optimal growth and development. Achieving this goal is problematic. Most, if not all, very-low-birth-weight infants (VLBWI) are undernourished and under-grown when they are first discharged from the hospital. This has important impli...

Total 36 reports on the mortality rates (MRs) of low birth weight infants (LBWI) and very LBWI (VLBWI) in Korea from the 1967 through 2001 were analyzed. We compared the changes in the MR by 5 and 10-yr interval. The MRs observed by 5-yr intervals from the early 1960s through the 1990s have drastically decreased. The MRs of LBWI are as follows: 23.1% and 23.6% in the 1960s, 17.3% and 16.8% in t...

Central venous catheters are widely used in children, particularly in very-low-birth-weight infants in whom long-term access to the venous system is required. This may be achieved by using peripherally inserted central catheters or tunnelled central venous lines (eg Broviac or Hickman lines). Previous case reports of fractured central catheters in premature neonates have involved peripherally i...

OBJECTIVE To examine the development of reading skills among very-low-birthweight (VLBW) children and to what extent reading difficulties at 9 years of age persist unchanged, are attenuated, or are enhanced at 15 years of age. METHODS Fifty-six VLBW and 52 normal birthweight (NBW) children were assessed on word decoding, word recognition, and reading comprehension at 9 and 15 years of age. ...

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Study of kicking development provides important information to understand how early spontaneous movements change in infants as they acquire voluntary control. Researchers have investigated the kicking movements of preterm infants; however, the movement patterns that they have described were inconsistent. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to examine the development...

Background: Weight at birth is a good indicator of the newborn’s chances for survival, growth, long-term health and psychosocial development. Low birth weight babies are significantly at risk of death, contributing to the high perinatal morbidity and mortality in Ethiopia. Therefore, the aimed of this study is to assess the prevalence and associated factors of Low Birth Weight in Axum and Laela...

BACKGROUND To determine the effect of human milk, maternal and donor, on in-hospital growth of very low birthweight (VLBW) infants. We performed a retrospective cohort study comparing in-hospital growth in VLBW infants by proportion of human milk diet, including subgroup analysis by maternal or donor milk type. Primary outcome was change in weight z-score from birth to hospital discharge. MET...