Efficacy of Intermediate-Dose Oral Erythromycin on Very Low Birth Weight Infants With Feeding Intolerance

Erythromycin is generally used as a prokinetic agent for the treatment of feeding intolerance in preterm infants; however, results from previous studies significantly vary due to different medication dosages, routes of administration, and therapy durations. The effectiveness and safety of intermediate-dose oral erythromycin in very low birth weight (VLBW) infants with feeding intolerance was examined in this study. Methods: Between November 2007 and August 2009, 45 VLBW infants with feeding intolerance, who were all at least 14 days old, were randomly allocated to a treatment group and administered 5 mg/kg oral erythromycin every 6 hours for 14 days (n=19). Another set of randomly selected infants was allocated to the control group, which was not administered erythromycin (n=26). Results: The number of days required to achieve full enteral feeding (36.5±7.4 vs. 54.7±23.3 days, respectively; p=0.01), the duration of parenteral nutrition (p