Research issues in low birth weight feeding

Survival of premature and low birth weight infants has markedly improved during the last few decades.Nutrition is believed to playa fundamental role inoptimizing the growth and development of theseinfants both during their period of hospital stay andpost discharge. Feeding of low birth weight babiesis a very challenging issue as trials dealing withvarious aspects are lacking. There is need forinformation on the choice of milk for a preterm inhospital and post discharge, fortification, dilemmasregarding when to initiate feeds, progression andfrequency of feeds and lastly management of feedintolerance. The purpose of this review is to highlightthe paucity of evidence in certain areas of LBWfeeding and suggest important areas of futureresearch.