Nutrition Care for Newborns with Congenital Heart Disease

Nutrition has been recognized as a key determinant of health in infants for centuries. The science of nutrition can be defined in many ways. Simply stated it is the science of nourishing the body properly or the effect of food on the living organism. In 1969 Yudkin, a pioneer in the science of nutrition, defined nutrition as the relationship between man and his food. More recently, the council on Foods and Nutrition of the American Medical Association elaborated further by describing nutrition as ‘‘the science of food, the nutrients and other substances therein, their action, interaction, and balance in relation to health and disease.’’ Regardless of the chosen definition of nutrition, the complexity of neonates with congenital heart disease (CHD) requires an understanding of the unique nutritional needs of this population by those entrusted to care for them. Various terminology is used in the literature to describe inadequate growth in infants with CHD. Malnutrition is one term commonly used to describe a state of poor nutrition and growth failure. Failure to thrive (FTT) is a diagnosis used frequently by health care professionals. It describes a clinical syndrome of growth failure in any infant who fails to grow at the expected rate over a period of months, often with various organic and nonorganic causes. Cardiac cachexia is a syndrome of protein-energy malnutrition seen in some infants with cardiac disease and is most prevalent in infancy. Cachexia can develop over several weeks to months, may range from mild to severe, and is largely amenable to