BI measures in children following cardiac surgery V3
Research type
Research Study
Full title
To examine the clinical relevance of serial bioelectrical impedance measures in children following cardiac surgery.
IRAS ID
167506
Contact name
Luise V Marino
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
University Hospital Southampton
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 0 months, 0 days
Research summary
Children with congenital heart defects (CHD) often display poor growth. We are looking to develop an integrated nutrition care pathway for children with CHD, with the aim of achieving the best growth possible before and after surgery. There are several components to this piece of work, which include monitoring growth prior to surgery, understanding from the parents perspective whether they feel their child experiences feeding difficulties and finally peri-operative growth.
Pre-operative growth is important and more regular contact with a health care professional, such as a dietitian or cardiac liaison nurse may identify feeding difficulties and poor weight gain earlier than the current review process. Post operatively, children are admitted to the paediatric intensive care (PICU). During the first few days of their PICU stay their calorie requirements are usually low as energy usually required for growth is switched off as cells are not able to use nutrients in the same way. However, we do not know at which point following surgery cellular function improves and when children will require their usual energy intake to support continued growth.
We want to use a machine which passes a tiny electrical current through the body, (this cannot be felt) to measure cell function (resistance). We want to try and understand whether this would be a useful bedside tool to determine changes in cell function, signalling the need to increase nutrition support. This method, is called bioelectrical impedance (BI) and has been used in children for over 30 years, but has not been studied in this patient group. We want to understand whether measuring BI in children with CHD can guide improved nutrition during peri-operatively thereby reducing the risk of hospital induced malnutrition and total length of hospital stay.REC name
West Midlands - Solihull Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
15/WM/0020
Date of REC Opinion
15 Jan 2015
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion