Efficacy of a developmental care and a specific educational programme to promote and support breastfeeding in VLBW infants: a retrospective, 4-year cohort study

The evidence for breastfeeding benefits in VLBW infants concerns short and long term nutritional aspects, host protection, developmental and behavioural outcomes and decreased risk of cardio-vascular disease in adulthood. The paper aims to examine the efficacy of a developmental care and a specific educational programme to support breastfeeding in VLBW infants in terms of percentage of exclusively breastfed infants at discharge. Analyzing the results, the Spearman's rho test and the Kendall's tau test show a positive correlation between years and "any human milk" group. Thus our NICU multidisciplinary staff training for breastfeeding support in VLBW infants seems to play a significant role in protecting, promoting and supporting breastfeeding.