Feeding of Premature Infants

HUMAN milk is widely regarded as the food of choice for premature infants. Recently summarized laboratory investigations¹have cast doubt on this widely held clinical impression. To reassess the problem, carefully controlled clinical studies were undertaken comparing the progress of premature infants fed isocaloric amounts of human milk or mixtures of cow's milk under comparable conditions of nursing, medical and environmental conditions. The present report compares the gains in weight of 122 premature infants whose weights at birth were between 1,000 and 2,000 grams (2 pounds, 3 ounces and 4 pounds, 6 ounces), all of whom were fed isocaloric amounts of either human milk, a simple mixture of evaporated milk or a mixture of partially skimmed cow's milk. The results indicate that greater gains in weight were achieved with the mixture of partially skimmed milk²than with evaporated milk, and that both mixtures of cow's milk were superior