Follow Up Of Exclusive Breast Feeding Of Preterm For 1st 6 Months Of Age As Regard The Physical Growth

AbstractPoor postnatal growth is a recognised complication of extremely preterm birth. Growth failure has mainly been reported in weight and height, with greater variation in head growth As poor growth is a recognised risk factor for adverse neurodevelopmental outcome clinicians traditionally aim to promote growth and, where it has fallen behind, to accelerate growth in order to achieve catch up. This has been the stimulus for the development of nutrient enriched milk formulas and has resulted in continuing variation in the use of breast milk.The aim of the present study was to compare the effect of preterm feeding with human breast milk and artificial milk on the various infant growth parameters. So, 80 preterm infants were selected to participate in the study. Among them, 50 infants were breastfed and the remainder 30 were artificially fed. The breastfed infants included 28 males (56.0 %) and 22 females with a mean gestational age of 33.72 ± 1.65 weeks while the artificially fed infants included 19 males (63.3 %) and 11 females (36.7 %) with a mean gestational age of 33.60 ± 1.87 weeks. Both groups were statistically matched regarding gestational age and sex distribution.Text in english, abstracts in english and arabic.