Examination of breastfeeding status of operated cases with congenital heart disease, aged 0-36 months, and factors affecting their nutrition

Congenital heart disease is a group of diseases that can manifest symptoms in the neonatal period and commonly affect nutrition in the short and long term, negatively impacting growth and development. Intensive care admissions, surgical procedures, and procedures that may be required from the neonatal period onward can lead to difficulties initiating and maintaining maternal nutrition. This section examines the maternal nutrition, treatment status, and nutrition of patients aged 0-36 months with congenital heart disease. Sixty patients with congenital heart disease who had undergone surgery were compared with 60 healthy controls. After obtaining approval from the participating families, a pre-prepared data collection formula was used to complete the data. In comparison to the maternal nutrition programs in the patient and control groups, the duration of the first 6 months of the mother-only program (2.47±2.97) was shorter than the duration of the mother-only program (4.85±1.90) in the control groups (p<0.001). Additionally, children in the control group (9.17±5.80) were recorded on the mother list for a longer time than those in the patient group (6.01±6.46) in terms of total maternal intake duration (p=0.006). As a result of the study, the enteral tube-fed group was significantly different from the unfed group only in terms of maternal intake duration (p=0.145), while the total maternal intake duration was longer than the non-enteral tube-fed group, and this difference varied differently depending on the maternal cycle (p=0.010). When the children in the case and control groups were evaluated in terms of child percentiles, it was observed that children with congenital heart disease were significantly shorter in height compared to controls (p<0.001). Furthermore, 26.7% of children in the patient group were in the ≤3rd weight percentile, while this rate was 1.7% in the control group (p<0.001). In conclusion, infants who have undergone cardiac surgery are a more likely group to receive ongoing maternal management support than healthy controls. Anthropometric measurements indicating growth, such as weight gain and height, are backdated from healthy controls. Therefore, for cardiac surgery insurance, it is crucial to ensure complete child health monitoring and to obtain health data that can be used to support professional nutrition investments in the mother-baby pair.