Central catheter removal timing and growth patterns in preterm infants.

Background: Early discontinuation of total parenteral nutrition (TPN) at 100 ml/kg/day of enteral feeds, compared with 140 ml/kg/day, led to significant delay in time to regain the birth weight in very low birth weight infants (birth weight < 1500 g, VLBW). Our aim was to compare the growth of infants in relation with timing of TPN discontinuation up to 2 years corrected gestational age (CGA).

Methods: Posttrial follow-up study using review of paper medical records. Participants of the randomized controlled trial studying effect of early parenteral nutrition discontinuation on time to regain birth weight in VLBW infants were included. Growth parameters inclusive of weight, length, and occipital-frontal circumference (OFC) were collected. Z-scores were calculated at five predefined time points-birth, 0-11 weeks CGA, 12-35 weeks CGA, 36-60 weeks CGA, and 61-96 weeks CGA and compared for control and intervention groups.

Results: Regarding weight, we found lower mean Z-score in the intervention group between 0 and 11 weeks CGA, with larger difference in extremely low birth weight infants (birth weight < 1000 g, ELBW), but this did not reach the statistical significance. Regarding length, the same difference, slightly delayed to 35 weeks CGA was observed and reached statistical significance for ELBW infants between 12 and 35 weeks CGA. There was no difference in OFC mean Z-scores at any timepoint.

Conclusions: The discontinuation of TPN at 100 ml/kg/day showed significantly lower Z-score for length in ELBW infants between 12 and 35 weeks CGA. There were no differences in Z-scores by 2 years CGA.