Nutrition of preterm infants after discharge.

The fundamental principle underlying nutritional support is that intake meets needs thereby ensuring the best outcome, which, in the case of the preterm infant, is optimal growth and development. Achieving this goal is problematic. Most, if not all, very-low-birth-weight infants (VLBWI) are undernourished and under-grown when they are first discharged from the hospital. This has important implications for the nutritional care of preterm, particularly the breast-fed, VLBWI after hospital discharge.