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Departments > Department of Nutrition |
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| Nutritional status plays a major role in post operative recovery following major open heart surgery particularly in small babies. Children with congenital heart disease especially defects in the heart with left to right shunt and congestive failure have fast respiration and spend lot of energy for breathing. |
| They are under-weight and failure to thrive due to various reasons like unable to suck milk, faulty feeding methods, sub optimal nutritional status of the feeds, poor socio-economic background and repeated chest infections. It is very important to counsel the parents regarding the feeding methods to advise them to improve the nutritional status of the babies before the surgery. Some of the children following open heart surgery require staying in the ICU for longer period. Day to day assessments of the nutritional status of the patient is very important to prescribe the diet, keeping in view of various organ functions like liver, kidney and heart etc. We use various formulas such as salt restricted, low protein, high protein, low fat, high calorie diet according to the patient condition. Babies, who are on ventilator, require nasogastric feeds and some of the babies require total parenteral nutrition. |
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| We have to maintain strict asepsis to prevent infection related problems. Custom made nutritional formula helps the children to build up their resistance and fast recovery, following major heart surgery. |
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