[Breastfeeding promotion strategies study on preterm infants in the neonatal intensive care unit]

To explore the effect of breastfeeding promotion strategies on neonatal clinical outcomes of preterm infants during hospitalization in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU).

We developed breastfeeding promotion strategies, including the establishment of a multidisciplinary breastfeeding steering team, breastfeeding support of families and society, family-integrated care, kangaroo mother care, donor human milk bank, and so on. Preterm infants meeting the inclusion standard, less than 32 weeks gestational age, who were admitted to NICU from November 2015 to February 2017 were enrolled, and the eligible infants were divided into two groups (control group and intervention group) before and after policy implementation. The data of preterm infants including breastfeeding related outcomes (time to initiation of enteral feeding, time to initiation of breastfeeding, time to achieve full breastfeeding, time to achieve full enteral feeding and rate of breastfeeding), growth (extrauterine growth restriction) and complications were compared between the two groups.

One hundred and twenty-three preterm infants were enrolled, including 61 in the control group and 62 in the intervention group. There were no significant differences in gender, gestational age, birth weight, intrauterine growth retardation (IUGR) and admission disease status between the two groups (P>0.05). Compared with the control group, there were significantly earlier time to initiation of enteral feeding [15.37 (10.00, 22.13) h vs. 20.25 (12.88, 26.33) h, P<0.01], time to achieve full breastfeeding [91.00 (69.75, 103.00) h vs. 94.00 (80.37, 118.75) h, P=0.04], and time to achieve full enteral feeding [12 (11, 15) d vs. 14 (12, 18) d, P<0.01] in the intervention group. Otherwise, there were no significant differences in time to initiation of breastfeeding, hospital stay, extrauterine growth restriction (EUGR) occurance rate of weight, the rate of breastfeeding, motality, and the incidence of complications including feeding intolerance, neonatal necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), bronchopulmonary dysplasia (BPD) and retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) (P>0.05).

The breastfeeding promotion strategie was a quality improvement of ordinary breastfeeding protocol. It had significantly reduced time to initiation of enteral feeding, time to achieve full breastfeeding and time to achieve full enteral feeding for preterm infants in NICU. Further research is needed to confirm whether the strategies can improve the breastfeeding rate and reduce the occurrence of the complications, such as NEC, BPD, and ROP.