1 Georgetown University Division of Neonatology, Columbia Hospital for Women, 2425 L St NW, Washington, DC 20037
To the Editor.
I would like to comment on the article by Ostertag et al, "Early Enteral Feeding Does Not Affect the Incidence of Necrotizing Enterocolitis" (Pediatrics 1986;77:275-280). Support for the concept of early gastrointestinal nutrition in the high-risk newborn comes from animal studies that showed that dogs with bowel ischemia that were given intraluminal substrate (10% glucose) had higher levels of adenosine triphosphate in mucosal cells and less morphologic damage than animals without that infusion.1