Human Milk Banking: a bridge between the preterm mother and infant; the experience from a Greek Public Perinatal Center

Abstract

Globally increasing scientific knowledge has acclaimed the treating of preterm infants with mother's own raw milk as well as the practice of donor human milk feeding, combined with the early initiation of breastfeeding, as a basic nutritional policy for preterm infants in Greece. Nowadays, donor human milk banking is being promoted and underpinned as the most basic element of the Greek national breastfeeding policy for preterm infants in Neonatal Intensive Care Units (NICU). Donor Human Milk Banks, besides gathering, screening, and pasteurizing donor's human milk consist a bridge between the preterm mother and infant, especially during the first days of lactation, that preterm mother's milk cannot completely fulfill her infants' needs. Human milk banking represents an advantageous tool for breastfeeding promotion. As found in recently conducted studies, preterm neonates treated only with an absolute human milk diet, including both raw maternal and donor banked milk, even from the first minutes of life, are able to initiate breastfeeding earlier compared to those infants, who are fed mainly with a preterm formula, that achieve later on time to initiate bottle-feeding. The policy of early aggressive nutrition even from the first hour of life with the minimal enteric feeding, is now practiced, by most neonatologists, in our country too, while early nutrition is also thought to be safe in terms of lifelong biological effects. For all the infants, both terms and preterms, human milk imposes a positive immune protection and enhances the emotional relationship between mother-newborn. Nonetheless, the nutritional value of preterm mother's milk is not completely defined as various analogies of macronutrients (protein, fat and carbohydrates), as well as energy have been analyzed in several studies. Reinforced bovine human milk fortifiers supplement with extra macronutrients and energy the raw and donor banked human milk, while the practice of performing targeted fortification, results in short-term improvements at hospital discharge, in neonatal anthropometric characteristics, feeding tolerance and length of stay in NICU.Keywords: baby friendly hospital; donor human milk bank; breastfeeding; preterm infants To cite this article: Kalliopi Dritsakou, et al. Human milk banking: a bridge between the preterm mother and infant; the experience from a greek public perinatal center. J Adv Nutr Hum Metab 2015; 2: e978.