Infant feeding practices within a large electronic medical record database

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Abstract

Background

The emerging adoption of the electronic medical record (EMR) in primary care enables clinicians and researchers to efficiently examine epidemiological trends in child health, including infant feeding practices.

Methods

We completed a population-based retrospective cohort study of 8815 singleton infants born at term in Ontario, Canada, April 2002 to March 2013. Newborn records were linked to the Electronic Medical Record Administrative data Linked Database (EMRALD™), which uses patient-level information from participating family practice EMRs across Ontario. We assessed exclusive breastfeeding patterns using an automated electronic search algorithm, with manual review of EMRs when the latter was not possible. We examined the rate of breastfeeding at visits corresponding to 2, 4 and 6 months of age, as well as sociodemographic factors associated with exclusive breastfeeding.

Results

Of the 8815 newborns, 1044 (11.8%) lacked breastfeeding information in their EMR. Rates of exclusive breastfeeding were 39.5% at 2 months, 32.4% at 4 months and 25.1% at 6 months. At age 6 months, exclusive breastfeeding rates were highest among mothers aged ≥40 vs. < 20 years (rate ratio [RR] 2.45, 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.62–3.68), urban vs. rural residence (RR 1.35, 95% CI 1.22–1.50), and highest vs. lowest income quintile (RR 1.18, 95% CI 1.02–1.36). Overall, immigrants had similar rates of exclusive breastfeeding as non-immigrants; yet, by age 6 months, among those residing in the lowest income quintile, immigrants were more likely to exclusively breastfeed than their non-immigrant counterparts (RR 1.43, 95% CI 1.12–1.83).

Conclusions

We efficiently determined rates and factors associated with exclusive breastfeeding using data from a large EMR database.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (10.1186/s12884-017-1633-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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Most cited references 11

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Breastfeeding and maternal and infant health outcomes in developed countries.

Stanley Ip, Mei Chung, Gowri Raman … (2007)

We reviewed the evidence on the effects of breastfeeding on short- and long-term infant and maternal health outcomes in developed countries. We searched MEDLINE(R), CINAHL, and the Cochrane Library in November of 2005. Supplemental searches on selected outcomes were searched through May of 2006. We also identified additional studies in bibliographies of selected reviews and by suggestions from technical experts. We included systematic reviews/meta-analyses, randomized and non-randomized comparative trials, prospective cohort, and case-control studies on the effects of breastfeeding and relevant outcomes published in the English language. Included studies must have a comparative arm of formula feeding or different durations of breastfeeding. Only studies conducted in developed countries were included in the updates of previous systematic reviews. The studies were graded for methodological quality. We screened over 9,000 abstracts. Forty-three primary studies on infant health outcomes, 43 primary studies on maternal health outcomes, and 29 systematic reviews or meta-analyses that covered approximately 400 individual studies were included in this review. We found that a history of breastfeeding was associated with a reduction in the risk of acute otitis media, non-specific gastroenteritis, severe lower respiratory tract infections, atopic dermatitis, asthma (young children), obesity, type 1 and 2 diabetes, childhood leukemia, sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), and necrotizing enterocolitis. There was no relationship between breastfeeding in term infants and cognitive performance. The relationship between breastfeeding and cardiovascular diseases was unclear. Similarly, it was also unclear concerning the relationship between breastfeeding and infant mortality in developed countries. For maternal outcomes, a history of lactation was associated with a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes, breast, and ovarian cancer. Early cessation of breastfeeding or not breastfeeding was associated with an increased risk of maternal postpartum depression. There was no relationship between a history of lactation and the risk of osteoporosis. The effect of breastfeeding in mothers on return-to-pre-pregnancy weight was negligible, and the effect of breastfeeding on postpartum weight loss was unclear. A history of breastfeeding is associated with a reduced risk of many diseases in infants and mothers from developed countries. Because almost all the data in this review were gathered from observational studies, one should not infer causality based on these findings. Also, there is a wide range of quality of the body of evidence across different health outcomes. For future studies, clear subject selection criteria and definition of "exclusive breastfeeding," reliable collection of feeding data, controlling for important confounders including child-specific factors, and blinded assessment of the outcome measures will help. Sibling analysis provides a method to control for hereditary and household factors that are important in certain outcomes. In addition, cluster randomized controlled studies on the effectiveness of various breastfeeding promotion interventions will provide further opportunity to investigate any disparity in health outcomes as a result of the intervention.

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Breastfeeding policy: a globally comparative analysis

Jody Heymann, Amy Raub, Alison Earle (2013)

OBJECTIVE: To explore the extent to which national policies guaranteeing breastfeeding breaks to working women may facilitate breastfeeding. METHODS: An analysis was conducted of the number of countries that guarantee breastfeeding breaks, the daily number of hours guaranteed, and the duration of guarantees. To obtain current, detailed information on national policies, original legislation as well as secondary sources on 182 of the 193 Member States of the United Nations were examined. Regression analyses were conducted to test the association between national policy and rates of exclusive breastfeeding while controlling for national income level, level of urbanization, female percentage of the labour force and female literacy rate. FINDINGS: Breastfeeding breaks with pay are guaranteed in 130 countries (71%) and unpaid breaks are guaranteed in seven (4%). No policy on breastfeeding breaks exists in 45 countries (25%). In multivariate models, the guarantee of paid breastfeeding breaks for at least 6 months was associated with an increase of 8.86 percentage points in the rate of exclusive breastfeeding (P < 0.05). CONCLUSION: A greater percentage of women practise exclusive breastfeeding in countries where laws guarantee breastfeeding breaks at work. If these findings are confirmed in longitudinal studies, health outcomes could be improved by passing legislation on breastfeeding breaks in countries that do not yet ensure the right to breastfeed.

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Breastfeeding rates and hospital breastfeeding practices in Canada: a national survey of women.

Janusz Kaczorowski, Maureen Heaman, Reg Sauve … (2009)

The Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative was launched by the World Health Organization and UNICEF in 1989 to promote, protect, and support breastfeeding worldwide. The objective of this study was to report breastfeeding rates and adherence to the Baby Friendly Hospital Initiative of the World Health Organization and UNICEF in Canada, as reported by participants in the Maternity Experiences Survey of the Canadian Perinatal Surveillance System. Eligible women (n = 8,244) were identified from a randomly selected sample of infants born 3 months before the May 2006 Canadian Census, and stratified by province or territory. Birth mothers living with their infants at the time of interview were invited to participate in a computer-assisted telephone interview conducted by Statistics Canada on behalf of the Public Health Agency of Canada. Interviews took approximately 45 minutes and were completed when infants were between 5 and 10 months old (between 9 and 14 months in the territories). Completed responses were obtained from 6,421 women (78% response rate). Nineteen of 309 questions concerned early mother-infant contact and breastfeeding practices. Breastfeeding intention (90.0%) and initiation (90.3%) rates were high, although exclusive breastfeeding rates at 6 months after birth (14.4%) were lower than desirable. The findings suggested a low adherence to several best practices advocated by the Baby-Friendly Hospital Initiative. Although breastfeeding initiation rates were relatively high in Canada, exclusive breastfeeding duration fell short of globally recommended standards.

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Author and article information

Contributors

Emily Bartsch: emily.bartsch@mail.utoronto.ca

Alison L. Park: alison.park@ices.on.ca

Jacqueline Young: jacqueline.young@ices.on.ca

Joel G. Ray: rayj@smh.ca

Karen Tu: k.tu@utoronto.ca

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): BMC Pregnancy Childbirth

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): BMC Pregnancy Childbirth

Title: BMC Pregnancy and Childbirth

Publisher: BioMed Central (London )

ISSN (Electronic): 1471-2393

Publication date (Electronic): 2 January 2018

Publication date PMC-release: 2 January 2018

Publication date Collection: 2018

Volume: 18

Electronic Location Identifier: 1

Affiliations

[1 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2157 2938, GRID grid.17063.33, University of Toronto, ; Toronto, Canada

[2 ]ISNI 0000 0000 8849 1617, GRID grid.418647.8, Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences, ; Toronto, Canada

[3 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2157 2938, GRID grid.17063.33, Departments of Medicine, Health Policy Management and Evaluation, and Obstetrics and Gynecology St. Michael’s Hospital, , University of Toronto, ; Toronto, Canada

[4 ]ISNI 0000 0001 2157 2938, GRID grid.17063.33, Department of Family and Community Medicine, and Health Policy Management and Evaluation, Toronto Western Hospital Family Health Team, , University of Toronto, ; Toronto, Canada

Article

Publisher ID: 1633

DOI: 10.1186/s12884-017-1633-9

PMC ID: 5749017

PubMed ID: 29291732

SO-VID: b5d7cbd6-0e7f-4230-8f10-9fc47114721c

License:

Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.

History

Date received : 30 January 2017

Date accepted : 15 December 2017

Funding

Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000024, Canadian Institutes of Health Research;

Funded by: FundRef http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100008097, Department of Family and Community Medicine, University of Toronto;

Custom metadata

ScienceOpen disciplines: Obstetrics & Gynecology

Keywords: breastfeeding,formula feeding,infant nutrition,electronic medical record,emr

Data availability:

ScienceOpen disciplines: Obstetrics & Gynecology

Keywords: breastfeeding, formula feeding, infant nutrition, electronic medical record, emr

Infant feeding practices within a large electronic medical record database

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Blockchain in Healthcare Today

Most cited references 11

Breastfeeding and maternal and infant health outcomes in developed countries.

Breastfeeding policy: a globally comparative analysis

Breastfeeding rates and hospital breastfeeding practices in Canada: a national survey of women.

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