Recuperación nutricional de recién nacidos de muy bajo peso durante el primer a？o de vida

the very low birthweight newborns face a double challenge in their growth during the first year of life because they have little energy reserves, reduced capacity to tolerate large intakes and high energy and micronutrient requirements to assure an accelerated growth. the objective of this paper was to characterize the growth during the first year of life of very low birthweight newborns and a term control group. to this end, a cohort study was conducted on 25 newborns whose birthweight was under 1800g, with 34 weeks of gestational age, born at "ramón gónzalez coro" gynecological and obstetric hospital in city of havana from january, 2000 to january 2001 and on 25 term newborns with good birthweight used as control group. perinatal nutritional development and anthropometric aspects were evaluated by using progression of weight, height, head circumference and arm circumference in the first year of life. it was found that longitudinal growth was good in low birthweight newborns although they did not reach the same growth values as term infants at their first year of age. weight for age was the indicator that fundamentally slows down the recovery.