What is your opinion about intermittant OG feeding in preterms to prevent GO reflux ( replacement of tube before every feeding period and then remove tube) ? How is your practice? If the baby needs to feed with tube, my practice is to keep tube and to change every 2-3 days in preterms.

We have a dedicated neonatal nurse in our unit, writing her thesis on enteral feeding. After this study, we now use continuous nasogastric feeding in our smallest infants.

When do you start feeding at every other hour or every third hour? At our unit we tend to start after coulpe of weeks, depending of the infant of course. I would like to know how others do.

When do you start feeding at every other hour or every third hour? At our unit we tend to start after coulpe of weeks, depending of the infant of course. I would like to know how others do.

We usually switch from contineous feeding to intermittent around gest.week 30, and we do it over about 10 days.

hi all, in our unit, we never do continuous feeding. we may start on day 1 if babe is able and EBM available, to prime the gut 4-6hrly, with 1ml milk. If a bigger preemie, we will start one hourly feeding, moving up to two then three hourly as tolerated by the infant.We keep our n/g tubes in situ for seven days, unless removed by the babe!! When the babes get to three hourly feeds, you see them start to get hungry, and more likely to root for a suck feed!

When do you start feeding at every other hour or every third hour? At our unit we tend to start after coulpe of weeks, depending of the infant of course. I would like to know how others do.

We start feedings within 2 hours of birth (unless patient is extremely unstable or a surgical case). Feedings are intermittent (every other hour), we hardly ever use any other way of giving food. All under 34 weeks get donated breastmilk until mum produces her own milk.

Most ELBW have full feedings within 5-10 days.

We generally start with 1ml hour in ELBWs on day 1 and then increase by 1ml/hour/day till we attain 180 ml/kg/day. Never used continous feeds and have not had problems with GER. We aspirate very 6 hours.

K P Sanghvi

First I wanted to address the initial post of inserting the feeding tube with each feed. If we have an infant who require more than a brief og feeding, we always use silastic og tubes which can be left in place for 30 days. Since the silastic is softer it doesn't carry the risk of perforation the other tubes have if left in for longer periods.

I have worked in several level 3 nicu's and have seen many different views on this subject. Most neonatologist feed within 48 hrs of birth even with UAC/UVC's in place, though the current place I work never feeds with belly lines in. Even with micro premies we usually have trophic feeds going to stimulate the gut. However, again the place I currently work is slower to initiate feedings.

We are using continuous and intermittent feeds in our unit. Trying to start out with breast milk in trophic amounts with our smallest patients.

What supplements do you use for calories/protein? And when is it initiated?

Using a silastic feeding tube in our unit which can remain in place for extended periods of time. Use of continuous feeding for the extremely small babies