“…The only previous report on this subject [9] showed that phototherapy had no effect on gastric emptying, but most of the patients investigated had mild jaundice by our stan dards (mean serum bilirubin concentration 227 pmol/1 SE ± 20.9), a constant-volume test feed was used for infants weighing 1,490-3,380 g and the test feed was 10% dextrose, a solution known to inhibit gastric emptying in the newborn [6,17,18]. Our findings confirm that phototherapy per se has no effect on gas tric emptying, but, whereas gastric emptying before phototherapy did not differ from nor mal in the patients of Blumenthal et al [9], in our more severly jaundiced infants gastric emptying was impaired, and returned to nor mal if phototherapy successfully reduced the serum bilirubin concentration.…”