At St. Joseph Medical Center’s downtown neonatal intensive care unit, a quiet change in what goes into tiny bottles is turning into a big win. After switching to a human milk–based fortifier, staff say cases of necrotizing enterocolitis, or NEC, have plunged in the 29‑bed NICU from as high as 11% to below 1% this year. Hospital leaders say that shift is already boosting survival odds for some of Houston’s smallest and most fragile patients.
Hospital leaders credit human milk–based fortifier
According to FOX 26 Houston, St. Joseph partnered with Prolacta to bring a human milk–based fortifier made from pasteurized donor breast milk into the NICU. NICU nurse manager Angela Hermes told the station, “We can take care of 29 babies here in our NICU,” highlighting just how many families are affected by any change in outcomes.
Chief Nursing Officer Vincent Gore said the unit’s NEC rate fell sharply after the new fortifier was introduced. Hospital officials told the station the goal is to head off complications linked to prematurity, not simply react once babies get sick.
What a human milk–based fortifier does
Human milk–based fortifiers are concentrated supplements made from donor human milk that boost calories, protein and minerals in a premature infant’s diet while avoiding the cow‑milk proteins used in many traditional fortifiers. Prolacta Bioscience, the company St. Joseph is working with, manufactures 100% human milk–based products and has published materials citing reductions in NEC after hospitals moved to exclusive human‑milk diets.
A large multicenter cohort study and other peer‑reviewed analyses have documented declines in NEC and mortality over recent years; see the multicenter study in PubMed for details.
NEC still carries serious risk for preemies
Necrotizing enterocolitis primarily strikes premature and very low birth‑weight infants and can escalate quickly to bowel perforation, sepsis and death. Medical summaries report that mortality among the smallest infants with NEC can range roughly from 30% to 50%; see Medscape. Systematic reviews place overall NEC mortality in the mid‑20s percent and show particularly high risk when surgery is required; see Pediatric Surgery International for analysis.
That track record helps explain why many NICUs treat feeding protocols and donor‑milk programs as key tools to keep NEC at bay.
What families should know
St. Joseph’s NICU, which can care for up to 29 babies, sits at 1401 St. Joseph Parkway in downtown Houston, per the hospital’s website. Leaders there say they plan to keep monitoring outcomes and fine‑tuning care as more data come in.
Families of premature infants are encouraged to ask their care teams about nutrition plans, donor‑milk options and the unit’s feeding protocols. For more on the hospital and its services, see St. Joseph Medical Center’s site and the original reporting by FOX 26 Houston.
