Continual catheter administration of an elemental diet in infants and children.

Elemental diet offers a safe, simple, widely applicable technique for providing nutritional support in infants and children, thus protecting them against the hazards of malnutrition. Continual catheter administration of elemental diet provides an avenue of nutritional support free of many of the complications associated with total parenteral nutrition. Although mechanical and metabolic complications were avoided by rigid protocol compliance in our group of over 150 patients, further metabolic studies may suggest minor compositional changes providing a more optimal diet for premature and newborn infants.