In the presence of a stoma. the majority (61%) of the patients were declining on the growth chart. This resulted in severe malnourishment in 51% of the young children with a small bowel stoma, and in 16% of the patients with a colostomy at the time of stoma closure. After stoma closure the decline in Z-scores is reversed in most young children; 67% showed a positive trend on the growth chart within a year following stoma closure. The decline in growth during the treatment with a stoma is more profound in small bowel stomas compared to colostomies. Growth at stoma closure was significantly more impaired in those treated with a proximal small bowel stoma and those who received a stoma after major small bowel resection. Early closure did not significantly affect Z-scores at stoma closure although closure is realized at a significantly younger age. Within a year following closure, none of the evaluated factors had a significant influence on the Z-scores.
Our results are in line with previous reports in small cohorts of infants treated with a stoma for multiple abdominal diseases and show that in the presence of both small and large bowel a decline in growth can be expected.(15) Those treated with a small bowel stoma and specifically those treated with a proximal small bowel stoma or those undergoing major small bowel resection seem most at risk. Stoma excretion from the small bowel is higher in nutrients than excretion from colostomies which suggests that in the latter more nutrients are resorbed which might contribute to this difference in growth.(21) This could also explain why more patients treated with a small bowel stoma were in need of TPN following stoma formation compared to colostomies. This difference in functional proximal bowel might also explain why patients with more proximal stomas and those who underwent a major resection have significant lower Z-scores at stoma closure. Another explanation could be found in the differences in the types of disease which result in small bowel stomas, in our cohort mostly necrotizing enterocolitis. In patients treated for necrotizing enterocolitis, length of resected intestine and prolonged inflammation both negatively influence growth.(8, 22)
It seems that stoma closure as soon as possible is a necessity for growth in all young patients which is in line with previous findings.(4) Even those at highest risk of growth impairment at the moment of stoma closure (patients treated by proximal ileostomy and those who underwent a major small bowel resection) show similar growth within a year following closure compared to patients with non-proximal small bowel stomas and those who did not underwent a major resection. This suggests that patients experience catch-up growth following stoma closure, even when there is less functional small bowel left, either due to resection or due to underdevelopment caused by disuse. Since stoma closure seems such an important condition for growth, this could be seen as an argument for early closure. In young children there is no consensus on the optimal timing of stoma closure. Some surgeons would wait for a safe weight (e.g. >2.5kg) to reduce the risk of surgery in a fragile patient.(23) Other, more recent studies report no significant difference in post-operative complications when a stoma is closed early (within 6 to 8 weeks), even with a low bodyweight.(24, 25) An argument against early closure is the assumed risk of adhesions which might result in a difficult operation. However, in patients treated for necrotizing enterocolitis, there was no difference in the presence of adhesions between early and late closure of stomas (26). Within our own cohort we couldn’t provide evidence that early closure might lead to higher Z-scores at closure compared to non-early closure. A reason could be that early closure in our cohort was mostly performed due to stoma complications, such as high-output or repeated prolapses, which might themselves have negatively influenced growth. Still, we showed that early closure results in the same amount of catch-up growth within a year following closure as in those non-early closed. Since early closure results in a significantly lower age at closure compared to non-early closure, we can at least say that it seems that early closure results in an early shift to catch-up growth gaining weeks of advantage.
Besides growth impairment, other complications after stoma creation can occur such as surgical site infections and high output stomas.(3) Moreover, closing the stoma also leads to both short-term complications, such as anastomotic leakage, and long-term morbidity, such as adhesion related small bowel obstruction and incisional hernia.(13, 27) Taking into account the high risk of complications and the risk of growth impairment, one might consider performing primary anastomosis instead of stoma creation with a lower threshold. Primary anastomosis has been shown to be feasible in selected patients treated for necrotizing enterocolitis or intestinal atresia.(13, 28, 29) Some situations, such as bowel perforation or meconium peritonitis, might necessitate stoma creation, but the associated risk of morbidity should be taken into account when deciding on whether or not to create a stoma.
In the presence of a stoma, oral sodium supplementation has been reported to improve weight gain.(15, 16, 30) Supplementation will counter the loss of sodium, which is partly excreted via stoma production, predominantly in small bowel stomas. However, sodium is also lost via renal excretion which is most prominent in premature born children.(31) This might explain why patients with a colostomy in this study were sometimes also found to be sodium depleted. Both the diagnosis and risk of sodium depletion in young children with a stoma are poorly understood. However, young children with a low urine sodium concentration (< 30 mmol/L) have been shown to gain significantly less weight than those with normal urine sodium levels.(20) We couldn’t verify these results in our cohort. There are currently no guidelines for correct sodium supplementation in young children with a stoma, and there are only small reports with suggested treatment protocols specifically for premature born neonates.(16) The lack of sufficient sodium supplementation in our cohort is indicating the need for a clearly defined protocol for oral sodium supplementation in young children with a stoma. An important part of such a protocol is how to evaluate the true body sodium levels and what substrate to use. There are multiple possibilities opted, the best method of which is suggested to be a 24-hours urine collection.(16) This method is often too burdensome for young children who recently underwent surgery, and insertion of a urinary catheter would be required. Another suggested option is to make use of serum sodium.(16) However, venipuncture for diagnosis is the primary cause for neonatal anemia, and therefore regular determination of serum sodium is not recommended.(32) In practice, urinary sodium concentration measured from a spot urine sample is an acceptable, non-invasive and inexpensive method. Still, the question is what level of spot urine sodium reflects true sodium deficiency. It could be that a change in definitions, for instance only defining inadequate supplementation after three measurements ≤ 30 mmol/L, would prove a better reflection of the true sodium levels. This could explain why we could not find a correlation between adequate supplementation and positive growth and why it seemed that adequately supplemented children showed a trend towards lower Z-scores at closure than non-adequately supplemented children, although other explanations, such as delayed growth, might apply.
Limitations of this study are the retrospective design which resulted in exclusion of a proportion of our cohort due to missing data regarding Z-scores. This might have led to selection bias. Also, patients were not randomly assigned to receive certain treatments, such as early closure or major small bowel resection. This could have resulted in allocation bias, possibly influenced by factors such as disease severity or occurrence of stoma related complications. Moreover, weight measurement was all single measurement which could vary from day to day. Growth is a complex process affected directly or indirectly by a multitude of interrelated factors which is why it is hard to determine the exact etiology of growth impairment. Our results seem to show that growth decreases in the presence of a stoma, which in most patients is only reversed after stoma closure. It could be that other confounding factors, for instance diet, might explain at least some of these changes in growth. Lastly, due to the retrospective nature of this study, we were limited in the factors we could retrieve. There are, for instance, other manners of assessing nutritional status of patients such as weight for height and middle upper arm circumference and other factors that could influence weight such as fluid balance. We also couldn’t retrieve information on refeeding, which has been opted to have a positive effect on growth in neonates, specifically prematures with low birthweight, treated with an intestinal stoma.(33)