Follow-up at 2 years

Low breastfeeding continuation to 6 months for very preterm infants: A European multiregional cohort study.
Bonnet C, Blondel B, Piedvache A, Wilson E, Bonamy AE, Gortner L, Rodrigues C, van Heijst A, Draper ES, Cuttini M, Zeitlin J; Effective Perinatal Intensive Care in Europe (EPICE) research group.
Matern Child Nutr. 2018 Aug 23:e12657.

Breastfeeding confers multiple benefits for the health and development of very preterminfants, but there is scarce information on the duration of breastfeeding after discharge from the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). We used data from the Effective Perinatal Intensive Care in Europe population-based cohort of births below 32 weeks of gestation in 11 European countries in 2011-2012 to investigate breastfeeding continuation until 6 months. Clinical and sociodemographic characteristics were collected from obstetric and neonatal medical records as well as parental questionnaires at 2 years of corrected age.

Prevalence and duration of breast milk feeding in very preterm infants: A 3-year follow-up study and a systematic literature review
Rodrigues C, Teixeira R, Fonseca MJ, Zeitlin J, Barros H, Portuguese EPICE (Effective Perinatal Intensive Care in Europe) Network.
Paediatr Perinat Epidemiol. (2018)

The World Health Organization recommends exclusive breast milk feeding until 6 months and continuing up to 2 years of age; little is known about whether very preterm infants are fed in accordance with these recommendations. We aimed to describe the prevalence and duration of breast milk feeding in very preterm children and to systematically review internationally published data.

We evaluated breast milk feeding initiation and duration in very preterm children born in 2 Portuguese regions (2011-2012) enrolled in the EPICE cohort and followed-up to the age of 3 (n = 466). We searched PubMed from inception to January 2017 to identify original studies reporting the prevalence and/or duration of breast milk feeding in very preterm children.