Abstract 1653 Poster Session III, Monday, 5/3 (poster 84)

Background: Current dietary recommendations are based on needs for maintenance and growth. Previous work has established that intakes take time to establish and that infants may develop a major nutrient deficit during initial hospital stay.

Aims: To prospectively document energy and protein intakes in preterm infants during initial hospital stay and compare them to current dietary recommendations.

Subjects and Methods: 105 preterm infants (birthweight ≥ 1750g, gestation < 34 weeks) admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit over a 6 month period. Infants were followed on a daily basis when actual intravenous and oral intake were recorded. Actual was subtracted from recommended energy (120 kcal/kg/day) and protein (3g/kg/day) and the net cumulative deficit was calculated. Infants were weighed on admission and at hospital discharge.

Results: The results (median, range) are presented: (Table)

Table 1 No caption available
Full size table

Conclusions: Despite an aggressive parenteral and enteral feeding regime infants accumulated a major energy and protein deficit which was not subsequently recovered. This was associated with significant postnatal growth retardation; i.e. median Z scores for weight on admission and discharge were -0.5 (-4 - 2.8) and -1.3 (-4.7 - 1.0). Current recommendations are only based on needs of maintenance and growth. This study suggests that strong consideration should also be given to the needs for 'catch-up' growth.