Nieuwe Nederlandse richtlijn voor vitamine K-toediening aan voldragen pasgeborenen

Conflict of interest: none declared. Financial support: none declared.

• Vitamin K-deficiency can cause haemorrhage in newborns and infants from the first hours up to several months after birth.

• These ‘vitamin K deficiency bleedings’ (VKDB) can be divided into 3 forms: early (occur in the first hours after birth), classic (first week after birth) and late (between the 2nd and the 12th week of life).

• The current Dutch vitamin K practice guideline consists of prophylactic administration of 1 mg vitamin K orally directly after birth and a daily dose of 25 μg from day 8 onwards.

• The current prophylactic treatment provides good protection against VKDB for healthy, breastfed infants.

• However, the current prophylactic treatment provides insufficient protection for a specific group of infants, namely breastfed infants with defective fat absorption (in cholestasis), leading to less efficient absorption of vitamin K by the body.

• Annually approximately 5 infants from this group suffer serious haemorrhage.

• After evaluation of current literature and advice from The Health Council of the Netherlands, vitamin K dosage was adapted for all breastfed infants from day 8 to 3 months (12th week of life) following birth: the daily dose was raised from 25 µg to 150 µg per day.