NCT00838188

Energy Expenditure in Breast and Bottle Feeding Preterm Infants Fed Their Mother's Breast Milk

• Status: Completed
• Phase: —
• Study type: Observational
• Enrollment: 23 (actual)
• Sponsor: Tel-Aviv Sourasky Medical Center · Other Government
• Sex: All
• Age: 34 Weeks – 40 Weeks
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

OBJECTIVE. Neonatologists consider early feeding at the breast to be too tiring for preterm infants, although there is no evidence that this is actually the case. It is also not known whether the method of feeding affects energy expenditure. We hypothesized that resting energy expenditure (REE) would be higher after breastfeeding than after bottle feeding. PATIENTS AND METHODS. preterm ( \>32 weeks GA) stable infants who are nourished entirely by their mothers' breast milk will be studied when fed expressed breast milk either by bottle or at the breast. REE will be measured for 20 minutes after feeding. Breast milk quantity is evaluated by pre- and post feeding weighing.

Detailed description

Most VLBW infants cannot be fed at the breast upon birth, and expressed breast milk by gastric tube is thus recommended. Sucking skills mature at around 34 weeks when nipple-feeding is introduced. In the absence of evidence-based data to decide the best timing to introduce breastfeeding, many clinicians use empiric criteria, such as the infant's weight, gestational age, and the ability of infants to bottle feed as proxies of readiness to breastfeed. Despite some evidence of physiological benefits of preterm infants feeding at the breast, many neonatologists consider direct breastfeeding to be too fatiguing for preterm infants. It is not known, however, whether preterm infants who are breastfed expend more energy than bottle-fed infants

Conditions

• Preterm Infants

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Way of Feeding - Breast feeding vs. Bottle feeding	Each infant was evaluated twice, once after breastfeeding and once after bottle feeding of breast. Computer-generated random numbers in sealed opaque envelopes to assign the breast/bottle sequence

Timeline

• Start date: 2007-11-01
• Completion: 2008-03-01
• First posted: 2009-02-06
• Last updated: 2009-02-06

Locations

2 sites across 1 country: Israel