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Feeding blood-tinged expressed mother's milk in the NICU

Journal of Perinatology volume 30, pages 368–369 (2010)Cite this article

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In the February 2009 issue1 we reported results of an e-survey of neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) professionals at Intermountain Healthcare regarding feeding NICU patients blood-tinged expressed mother's milk. We received 421 survey responses; 7% of respondents would discard the milk shown as #1 (faintly red breast milk), 75% would discard milk #2 and 98% would discard milk #3 (very red sample) (see Figure 1 in Phelps et al.1). The reasons given most frequently for not feeding blood-tinged milk were; (1) It would cause gastrointestinal upset and feeding intolerance (77% of respondents), (2) blood might appear in the stool and result in an evaluation for necrotizing enterocolitis (40% of respondents) and (3) emesis of blood might result in an evaluation for upper gastrointestinal hemorrhage (40% of respondents).

In the 7 months since that publication we have prospectively tracked 11 consecutive neonates that were fed blood-tinged milk brought to the NICU by their mothers. As shown in Table 1 we did not find the problems predicted in the survey in any.

Table 1 Results of feeding neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) patients blood-tinged milk expressed by their mothers
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References

  1. Phelps MM, Bedard WS, Henry E, Christensen SS, Gardner RW, Karp T et al. Attitudes of NICU professionals regarding feeding blood-tinged colostrum or milk. J Perinatol 2009; 29 (2): 119–213.

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  2. American Academy of Pediatrics. Policy Statement. Breastfeeding and the use of human milk. Pediatrics 2005; 115: 496–506.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Intermountain Healthcare, NICU, McKay-Dee Hospital Center, Ogden, UT, USA

    M M Phelps, V L Baer & R D Christensen

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  1. M M Phelps
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  2. V L Baer
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  3. R D Christensen
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Correspondence to M M Phelps.

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Phelps, M., Baer, V. & Christensen, R. Feeding blood-tinged expressed mother's milk in the NICU. J Perinatol 30, 368–369 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/jp.2009.200

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