Incidence of breast milk jaundice in healthy full-term infants

Yoon, Yong Ho; Choi, Kyong Eun; Kim, Kyung Ah; Ko, Sun Young; Lee, Yeon Kyung; Shin, Son Moon

Abstract

PURPOSE: It has been described that the incidence of breastfeeding jaundice is 13% and that of breast milk jaundice is 2%. The incidence in Korea was believed to be higher, but there were no studies to prove this assumption. The purpose of this study was to investigate the incidence of jaundice of healthy breastfed full-term infants in Korea.
METHODS
839 infants were enrolled who were admitted to the Postpartum Care Center of the Cheil General Hospital between January 1 and December 31, 2005, and were followed up for more than 7 days. Those infants were divided into 3 groups; Exclusive breastfeeding group; Partial breastfeeding group; Formula feeding group. If they became icteric, transcutaneous bilirubin (TcB) was measured by research nurses with JM-103 Jaundice meter (Konica Minolta sensing, Inc., Osaka, Japan). Using this method we investigated the incidence of breast milk jaundice of healthy breastfed full-term infants.
RESULTS
There were no significant differences in sex, birth weight, Apgar score, or obstetric risk factors among 3 groups but there were higher rates of vaginal delivery in the exclusive breastfeeding group. The incidence of breast milk jaundice was 10.8% in the exclusive breastfeeding group and 4.4% in the partial breastfeeding group. The incidence of breast milk jaundice in the breastfed infants was 6.3%. The incidence was significantly higher in the exclusive breastfeeding group than in the partial breastfeeding group.
CONCLUSION
The incidence of breast milk jaundice of healthy breastfed full-term infants was 6.3%. It was found that the incidence of breast milk jaundice was higher in this study than in other countries. But it was not a population-based study, so further study with the large sample sizes is needed.