Welcome to the ESPGHAN podcast! Yes, it’s another of our series of interviews obtained at the sponsoring organisation’s annual meeting in Helsinki, today with Heather Norris, from Bristol.

Ms. Norris trained as a dietitian – went slightly off-piste with two years of education in youth work and theology – and thereafter specialised first in paediatric nutrition and then, for the last fifteen years, in neonatal nutrition, working particularly in the last five of those years with the complicated patients born prematurely or having undergone surgical modification of the gut.

She shares today her insights into approaches to those patients’ care, addressing these questions:

• What are particular nutritional challenges following surgery in neonates?

• How does one know when to re-start nutrition, what feeds to choose, and how best to advance nutrition after gastrointestinal surgery in neonates?

• In what does effective management consist, yielding optimal outcomes for families and infants?

Literature

• Penman G et al. Neonatal feeding: Care and outcomes following gastrointestinal surgery. Infant 2017; 13(2):61–64. Non-indexed journal.

• Framework for practice: Holistic feeding and nutritional management for the near term/term neonate, following bowel surgery. June 2004. Sponsored by The National Neonatal Surgical Interest Group (NNSIG) of the Neonatal Nurses Association, Dartford, UK. Accessioned 2025.V.05 at: https://nna.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/Framework-for-Practice_NNSIG-V7.pdf

• Mo I et al. Nutritional management after necrotizing enterocolitis and focal intestinal perforation in preterm infants. Pediatr Res 2024 Jul 11. doi: 10.1038/s41390-024-03386-y. Online ahead of print. PMID: 38992154

Heather Norris’s favourite song: Elbow – One Day Like This

ESPGHAN favourite Songs can be found on Spotify: Spotify Playlist