Bowel Habit in Preterm New borns: Effect of New Formulas

Preterm infants may pass meconium only after the first 48 hours of life, even in the absence of any gastrointestinal disease. The role of various factors in determining the time of meconium elimination has been recently assessed. Gestational age and start of feeding had been demonstrated to influence first meconium timing. The aim of our study was to evaluate the time of first meconium passage and the time to achieve regular bowel movements (RBM), correlating these two events to different factors such as gestational age (GA), sex, type of delivery [caesarean section (CS) vs spontaneous delivery (SD)], 1' and 5' Apgar score (1'AS, 5'AS), time and type of feeding, oxygen requirement and any mode of respiratory support.