Aarts C, Kylberg E, Hörnell A, Hofvander Y, Gebre-Medhin M, Greiner T
Section for International Maternal and Child Health, Department of Women's and Children's Health, Uppsala University, Sweden.
Int J Epidemiol. 2000 Dec;29(6):1041-6. doi: 10.1093/ije/29.6.1041.
There is no accepted and widely used indicator for exclusive breastfeeding since birth. Indeed, the difference between 'current status' data on exclusive breastfeeding and data on 'exclusive breastfeeding since birth' is rarely recognized. We used data from a longitudinal study to examine this issue.
A descriptive longitudinal, prospective study design was used in which 506 mother-infant pairs were included. The mothers completed daily recordings on infant feeding during the first nine months after birth. A research assistant conducted fortnightly home visits with structured interviews. The resulting data on breastfeeding patterns are presented in two different ways: analysis of 'current status' data based on a single 24-hour recording of infant feeding at 2, 4 and 6 months of age, and analysis of data 'since birth', i.e. data on infant feeding for every day, starting from birth until the ages of 2, 4 and 6 months.
A wide discrepancy between the results obtained from the two analyses was found. The difference in the exclusive breastfeeding rate was over 40 percentage points at both 2 and 4 months of age (92% versus 51% at 2 months and 73% versus 30% at 4 months) and 9 percentage points at 6 months (11% versus 1.8%).
Current status indicators based on a 24-hour period may be inadequate and even misleading for many purposes. We propose that in many studies an indicator called 'exclusive breastfeeding since birth' could be added.
目前尚无被广泛接受且通用的自出生起纯母乳喂养的指标。实际上，纯母乳喂养的“当前状况”数据与“自出生起纯母乳喂养”数据之间的差异很少被认识到。我们利用一项纵向研究的数据来探讨这个问题。
采用描述性纵向前瞻性研究设计，纳入了506对母婴。母亲们记录了婴儿出生后头九个月的每日喂养情况。一名研究助理每两周进行一次家访并进行结构化访谈。由此得出的母乳喂养模式数据以两种不同方式呈现：基于婴儿在2、4和6个月龄时单一24小时喂养记录的“当前状况”数据分析，以及“自出生起”的数据，即从出生到2、4和6个月龄每天的婴儿喂养数据。
发现两种分析结果之间存在很大差异。在2个月和4个月龄时，纯母乳喂养率的差异均超过40个百分点（2个月时为92%对51%，4个月时为73%对30%），6个月时为9个百分点（11%对1.8%）。
基于24小时时间段的当前状况指标可能在许多情况下并不充分甚至具有误导性。我们建议在许多研究中可以增加一个名为“自出生起纯母乳喂养”的指标。
