<h3>Background</h3> Better pre-operative growth is correlated to improved post-operative outcomes for infants with congenital heart disease (CHD). A consensus-based nutritional guidelines for these patients was published in 2018. This study aimed to assess growth and clinical outcomes pre- and post-implementation of this guideline. <h3>Methods</h3> A single-centre retrospective review was performed in a tertiary cardiac centre between June 2019 (pre-implementation) and August 2021 (post-implementation). The time-lapse allowed service establishment. Infants who were admitted to CICU post-operatively with a primary diagnosis of a ‘high nutritional risk’ lesion were included. Primary outcomes were weight-for-age-z-scores (WAZ) at three time points: birth, referral to dietetic service and surgery; secondary outcomes were CICU length of stay (LOS), hospital-LOS, days ventilated and age at surgery. Data was extracted from the patient record by a dietitian and analysed using paired and independent t-tests through SPSS. <h3>Results</h3> 20 infants in the pre-service group (receiving no or community dietetic input) and 19 infants in the post-service group (specialist tertiary cardiac dietetic input following the guideline) were recruited. There was no significant difference between the pre- and post-service mean birth WAZ -1.13(±1.06 SD) and -0.80(±1.21) respectively; <i>p</i>=0.263 (95% CI: -1.14,0.32). The mean surgery WAZ was significantly lower in the pre-service group -2.13 (±1.72), compared to post service group -0.99 (±1.18); <i>p</i>=0.018 (-2.14,0.21). In the post-service group, mean birth WAZ 0.81 (±1.21) was significantly higher than WAZ at referral -1.49 (±1.16) <i>p=0.001</i> (95% CI:0.31,-0.06). The mean referral WAZ -1.49 (±1.16) was significantly lower than surgery WAZ -0.99 (±1.21) <i>p=0.008</i> (95% CI:-0.86,-0.15). Age at surgery, days ventilated post op, CICU-LOS, hospital-LOS and age at surgery decreased in the post-service group; although not statistically significant this may be attributable to a small sample size and could be clinically significant. <h3>Conclusion</h3> Specialist dietetic input following this consensus-based guideline improves growth at surgery. 

45 Implementation of a consensus-based nutritional pathway for pre-surgical infants with congenital heart disease improves pre-operative growth

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

Aileen O’Sullivan

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

45 Implementation of a consensus-based nutritional pathway for pre-surgical infants with congenital heart disease improves pre-operative growth