| Sumario: | Introduction: Pre-surgical malnutrition in children with congenital heart disease increases the rate of complications and delays cardiac surgery; however, there is no consensus on pre-surgical nutritional schemes or on the optimal nutrition to meet their metabolic needs. Objective: To describe the currently available literature on optimal nutritional therapy in infants with congenital heart disease during the preoperative period. Methodology: Narrative review according to PRISMA. We searched for articles on nutrition in infants with congenital heart disease prior to surgery, published in English and Spanish (2000 - 2021), in the Medline, Pubmed and Cochrane databases. Results: 770 articles were available, of which 25 original articles met the inclusion criteria. Conclusion: malnutrition is more frequent in infants with heart disease. Oral feeding is better than enteral tube feeding because the latter does not stimulate motor and sucking skills. Breast milk is the main source for enteral nutrition in the first six months of life; however, the use of infant formula also helps to increase energy needs, which are commonly increased according to heart disease.
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