Neonatal Gastro-Esophageal Reflux Disease (GERD) Management Trial

Gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) and its troublesome complications constitute serious diagnostic and management challenges to the development of safe feeding and airway protection strategies among infants convalescing in the neonatal intensive care units; thus contributing to prolonged lengths of stay, recurrent hospitalizations, and death. GERD is frequently diagnosed by inadequate criteria, and the relative risks, benefits and indications of GERD therapies are unclear. Significant gaps in knowledge exist in understanding the complex causal or adaptive aerodigestive protective reflex mechanisms implicated in GERD in infants. The long-term goal is to improve digestive health, nutrition, and infant development through the design of simplified personalized treatment paradigms by better understanding the pathophysiology of aerodigestive reflexes. The current objective is to conduct a prospective single center randomized blinded controlled trial comparing the short term effects of the investigators innovative feeding strategy bundle (study approach) versus standard feeding approach (conventional approach).