PERSPECTIVE
Donor breast milk for preterm infants
Banking for the future: investing in human milk
1 St George’s, University of London, London, UK
2 St Thomas Hospital, London, UK
3 United Kingdom Association for Milk Banking, The Milk Bank, Queen Charlotte’s and Chelsea Hospital, London, UK
Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
A F Williams
awilliam@sgul.ac.uk
Perspective on the paper by Boyd et al (see page F169)
Keywords: donor breast milk; enteral feeding; necrotising enterocolitis; very low birthweight
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
Those caring for the newborn have long appreciated the contribution made by breast milk to short-term and long-term health. In this issue Boyd et al1 report their systematic search for unbiased evidence comparing outcomes of very low birthweight babies fed donor human milk or formula. The paucity of data identified from such adequately controlled studies is remarkable, given that most very low birthweight infants cared for in the neonatal units of industrialised countries will receive formula at some point during their clinical course. Boyd et al nevertheless demonstrate that formula-fed very low birthweight babies are at significantly increased risk of necrotising enterocolitis (NEC) compared with those fed exclusively on breast milk. Particularly striking is the observation that the estimates of risk and associated confidence intervals were virtually identical—about a fivefold increase—in the studies cited, which were carried out on three continents. This, coupled with
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Arch. Dis. Child. Fetal Neonatal Ed. 2007 92: F169-F175.[Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]
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