Weight gain in babies with congenital heart disease and increased pulmonary blood flow :Breastfeeding versus supplemental spoon feeding. An open labelled randomized controlled trial

Infants with congenital heart disease and increased pulmonary blood flow frequently have feeding difficulty and failure to thrive. They typically present with interrupted feeding, sweating during feeds and suck rest suck cycle. Ideally all infants less than 6 months of age should be exclusively breastfed. Breastfeeding is a energy requiring process and is believed to be more tiring to the infants than spoon feeding. Keeping this in mind babies with heart disease and increased pulmonary blood flow are sometime advised to give expressed breastmilk by spoon so as to decrease energy expenditure. This has not been tested objectively yet and there is no evidence to support this practice. We want to find out whether feeding an infant with supplemental spoon feeding of expressed breastmilk will lead to better weight gain compared to traditional breastfed alone in infants with acyanotic congenital heart disease with increased pulmonary blood flow.

Hypothesis for study is that Supplemental feeding of expressed breastmilk by katori-spoon will lead to better weight gain compared to those on breastfeeding in infants with acyanotic congenital heart disease with increased pulmonary blood flow.