New clinical practice guideline on enteral feeding in very low birth weight infants; first part.

Tomás Sánchez-Tamayo, Maria G Espinosa Fernández, María C Moreno Algarra, Verónica Fernández Romero, Jose Vallejo Triano, Elías Tapia Moreno, Enrique Salguero García

The nutrition of very low birth weight (VLBW) infants is aimed at promoting a similar growth to that occurring in the uterus. However, in practice this is difficult to achieve and extrauterine growth restriction is frequent. The current tendency is to avoid this restriction by means of early parenteral and enteral nutrition. Nonetheless, uncertainty about many of the practices related with nutrition has resulted in a great variation in the way it is undertaken. In 2009 and 2011 in our hospital there was an unexpected increase in necrotizing enterocolitis. To check to see whether our nutrition policy was involved, we undertook a systematic review and drew up clinical practice guidelines (CPG) about enteral feeding in VLBW infants. New considerations about the duration of the fortification and the use of probiotics have led to an update of these CPG.