In this episode of Nutrition Pearls: the Podcast, co-hosts Megan Murphy and Jen Smith speak with Megan Horsley on her involvement with an intensive tube feed weaning program.  Megan is a pediatric dietitian at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. She has 18 years of experience in pediatrics with a focus in cardiology and currently practices as a Lead dietitian as well as a cardiac float, serving all areas of cardiology (the Critical Cardiac Intensive Care Unit, the Acute Care Cardiology Unit and Outpatient Cardiology). Her most recent work has involved establishing a tube wean program in 2020 for heart patients which focuses on optimizing oral skills and getting them safely off their feeding tube.

She is a Certified Nutrition Support Clinician and in addition maintains her Certification as a Specialist in Pediatric Nutrition. She is involved in many projects, research, and quality improvement work, including the National Pediatric Cardiology Quality Improvement Collaborative (NPC-QIC), the Advanced Cardiac Therapies Improving Outcomes Network (ACTION) and the Pediatric Cardiac Intensive Care Society (PCICS). She has also served as a board member of the Congenital Heart Alliance of Cincinnati since 2017 and is a member of the Prolacta Clinical Advisory Board (PCAB) since 2019. Megan has eighteen years of professional practice in pediatric nutrition and twenty-one years of personal experience as a heart mom herself. She plans on continuing to concentrate her efforts on improving the nutritional care, experience and outcomes for all children affected by congenital heart disease.

Nutrition Pearls is supported by an educational grant from Mead Johnson Nutrition.

Resources:

Tool Kit: NPC-QIC Tube Weaning — NPC-QIC

Kaskie, S., Horsley, M., & Marcuccio, E. (2024). Experiences in Tube Weaning Children with Congenital Heart Disease and Oral Feeding Aversion. Pediatric Cardiology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00246-024-03515-8

Wong, J., Loomba, R., Allen, K. Y., Chan, T., Coolidge, N., Del Grippo, E., Horsley, M., Slater, N., Spader-Cloud, M., Steltzer, M., & Marcuccio, E. (2024). Structured Tube Weaning Using the Hunger Provocation Method in Infants with Single Ventricle Heart Defects: A Multicenter Study. Pediatric Cardiology. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00246-024-03558-x

Horsley, M., Hill, G. D., Kaskie, S., Schnautz, M., Brown, J., & Marcuccio, E. (2022). Evaluation of an Outpatient and Telehealth Initiative to Reduce Tube Dependency in Infants with Complex Congenital Heart Disease. Pediatric Cardiology, 43(7), 1429–1437. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00246-022-02864-6

Weaning from a feeding tube in children with congenital heart disease: A review of the literature: www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1058981321000801?via%3Dihub

Cardiology Feeding Tube Wean Clinic

Produced by: Corey Irwin

NASPGHAN - Council for Pediatric Nutrition Professionals

[email protected]