Ten-year experience of home parenteral nutrition in a single centre

Recent data are scarce on the provision of home parenteral nutrition (HPN) in children from the UK but would help to commission intestinal failure services. Our aim was to describe 10 years of HPN experience in our centre, which serves a population of 650,000 children.

Outcome and complication data were collected retrospectively from hospital records of children receiving HPN from April 2001. Data from other centres were used to compare complications and outcomes in the provision of HPN.

Nineteen children (12 females) received 10,213 days (28 years) of HPN. In this group, incidence of blood culture positive sepsis was four episodes/1000 days PN. Two children had early intestinal failure-associated liver disease. Of the 19, seven still receive HPN at our centre, six survived PN, three were transferred to other services while still on HPN and three died.

Outcome and complication data for HPN from a single UK regional paediatric centre are similar to larger centres. These data provide recent evidence of the disease burden of HPN, which are important for the commissioning of intestinal failure services.