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Frequency and Determinants of Breastfeeding in Greece: A Prospective Cohort Study during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Breastfeeding is considered to be the cornerstone of child health. In Europe however, overall breastfeeding rates remain low. The present study aimed at estimating the frequency of breastfeeding in Greece during the COVID-19 pandemic period and comparing findings with the latest national study in or...

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Autores principales: Tigka, Maria, Metallinou, Dimitra, Nanou, Christina, Iliodromiti, Zoi, Lykeridou, Katerina
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8774342/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35053668
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/children9010043
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author Tigka, Maria
Metallinou, Dimitra
Nanou, Christina
Iliodromiti, Zoi
Lykeridou, Katerina
author_facet Tigka, Maria
Metallinou, Dimitra
Nanou, Christina
Iliodromiti, Zoi
Lykeridou, Katerina
author_sort Tigka, Maria
collection PubMed
description Breastfeeding is considered to be the cornerstone of child health. In Europe however, overall breastfeeding rates remain low. The present study aimed at estimating the frequency of breastfeeding in Greece during the COVID-19 pandemic period and comparing findings with the latest national study in order to identify a potential impact of the pandemic. Additionally, possible correlations of socio-cultural and demographic characteristics with breastfeeding indicators were investigated. This prospective cohort study included 847 women from five tertiary maternity hospitals, between January and December 2020. Data were collected by a structured questionnaire via interview during hospitalization and via telephone in the first, third and sixth month postpartum. Results showed that all breastfeeding indicators improved over the last three years. Full breastfeeding reached 7.2%, contrary to 0.78% of the latest national study at six months postpartum. Employment, marital status, educational level, mode of delivery, type of maternity hospital, body mass index before pregnancy, previous breastfeeding experience of the mother and infant’s birth weight correlated significantly with breastfeeding indicators at different time periods. The COVID-19 pandemic seems to have favorably influenced breastfeeding initiation and duration in Greece due to lockdowns, home confinement and teleworking.
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spelling pubmed-87743422022-01-21 Frequency and Determinants of Breastfeeding in Greece: A Prospective Cohort Study during the COVID-19 Pandemic Tigka, Maria Metallinou, Dimitra Nanou, Christina Iliodromiti, Zoi Lykeridou, Katerina Children (Basel) Article Breastfeeding is considered to be the cornerstone of child health. In Europe however, overall breastfeeding rates remain low. The present study aimed at estimating the frequency of breastfeeding in Greece during the COVID-19 pandemic period and comparing findings with the latest national study in order to identify a potential impact of the pandemic. Additionally, possible correlations of socio-cultural and demographic characteristics with breastfeeding indicators were investigated. This prospective cohort study included 847 women from five tertiary maternity hospitals, between January and December 2020. Data were collected by a structured questionnaire via interview during hospitalization and via telephone in the first, third and sixth month postpartum. Results showed that all breastfeeding indicators improved over the last three years. Full breastfeeding reached 7.2%, contrary to 0.78% of the latest national study at six months postpartum. Employment, marital status, educational level, mode of delivery, type of maternity hospital, body mass index before pregnancy, previous breastfeeding experience of the mother and infant’s birth weight correlated significantly with breastfeeding indicators at different time periods. The COVID-19 pandemic seems to have favorably influenced breastfeeding initiation and duration in Greece due to lockdowns, home confinement and teleworking. MDPI 2022-01-02 /pmc/articles/PMC8774342/ /pubmed/35053668 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/children9010043 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Tigka, Maria
Metallinou, Dimitra
Nanou, Christina
Iliodromiti, Zoi
Lykeridou, Katerina
Frequency and Determinants of Breastfeeding in Greece: A Prospective Cohort Study during the COVID-19 Pandemic
title Frequency and Determinants of Breastfeeding in Greece: A Prospective Cohort Study during the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_full Frequency and Determinants of Breastfeeding in Greece: A Prospective Cohort Study during the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_fullStr Frequency and Determinants of Breastfeeding in Greece: A Prospective Cohort Study during the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_full_unstemmed Frequency and Determinants of Breastfeeding in Greece: A Prospective Cohort Study during the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_short Frequency and Determinants of Breastfeeding in Greece: A Prospective Cohort Study during the COVID-19 Pandemic
title_sort frequency and determinants of breastfeeding in greece: a prospective cohort study during the covid-19 pandemic
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8774342/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35053668
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/children9010043
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