[The registers of pediatric patients with home artificial nutrition. The Spanish experience]

BACKGROUND

the number of infants and children who receive artificial nutrition at home has been steadily increasing over the last decades, as better outcomes for children with chronic conditions have been achieved. In order to evaluate the need of resources to implement the technique it is necessary to know how many patients benefit from home artificial nutrition. This information can be estimated from the register of patients, when available.

METHODS

in this paper the characteristics of all registers were reviewed, especially those devoted to pediatric patients.

RESULTS

only two pediatric registers are active in 2023: the Canadian register and the Spanish one. NADYA register from the Spanish Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism (SENPE) and the recent REPAFI, form the Spanish Society of Pediatric Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Nutrition. The most valuable register from the British Society, BANS, stopped providing information in 2018.

CONCLUSION

despite the fact of acknowledging the importance of having gathered information on the prevalence and incidence of home artificial nutrition, to fit resources to necessities, the number of active registers is quite short.