THE ESPGHAN COMMITTEES VIEW ON THE ISSUE OF FEEDING OF PREMATURE NEWBORNS AFTER RELEASE FROM THE IN-PATIENT DEPARTMENT
During the last decades, there has been a substantial postive dynamics in special care nursery services for premature infants thanks to advances in obstetric and neonatal care. Due to this, there arise new issues related to both short-term and long-term effects of different approaches to feeding premature infants. In most European countries premature infants are released from in-patient department sooner than it was done before for both economic and certain other reasons. It should be noted that the body mass of a premature patient is far from the body mass of a healthy full-term infant. In this connection a question arises as to for how long premature infants require a certain feeding regime with special foods? This article illustrates the results of randomised controlled trials designed to study both breast- and formula-based feeding of premature infants after their release from an in-patient facility.