Preterm Infants May Better Tolerate Warmer Feeds

These infants were fed with room temperature (22-24 °C) so that hypothesizing that they will have more feeding tolerance and therefore more co-existing morbidities.

Fifteen NICU mothers volunteered and expressed their milk for rapid measurement of freshly expressed breast milk. The mean (± SD) temperature of freshly expressed breast milk was found to be 33±1.5 °C in these preliminary measurements. Confirming this finding, the investigators decided to feed these infants with milk at 32 - 34 °C to examine the effects of feeding temperature and the possible comorbidities with a hypothesis that warmer feeding at the temperature of freshly expressed breast milk may be better physiologically.