Doctors treating newborn babies across the country are struggling to deal with an issue ordinarily associated with hardened adults: addiction.
As The New York Times reports, because of rising painkiller abuse, especially in rural areas, an increasing number of babies enter the world addicted to opiate drugs.
The problems typically start with a pregnant mother struggling to overcome addiction, which can lead to prenatal seizures, if not miscarriages. Their newborns often are weaned from opiates with methadone, a drug commonly used to treat heroin addicts. Withdrawal symptoms include tremors, diarrhea and stiff limbs, as well as excessive crying caused by intense discomfort.
This forces doctors to make tough decisions about whether it is in the baby’s and the mother’s medical interest to expose the unborn child to heavy doses of drugs, or to risk the complications of withdrawal.
“I’ve had pharmacies that have just called back and said: ‘This lady’s pregnant. Why do you want me to fill this scrip? I can’t do that,’” said Dr. Craig Smith, a family doctor in Bridgton, Maine. “But when you stop and think about what actually happens during withdrawal and how violent it can be, that would certainly be not in the baby’s best interest.”
In Maine the problem is particularly severe. The state’s two largest hospitals had to treat 276 newborns for addiction and withdrawal in 2010, an almost four-fold increase from five years earlier. Other states, such as Florida and Ohio, also have witnessed big increases.
The problem is worsened by the fact that, with abuse of painkillers a more recent phenomenon in much of the country, doctors are unsure of how to treat pregnant addicts. As was the case with so-called crack babies in the 1980s, there is no universally endorsed method for treating opiate-addicted newborns, and there has been little research on the subject.
“It’s really remarkable how little we know about the effect of prescription drugs and even nonprescription drugs on the fetus,” Dr. Nora D. Volkow, director of the National Institute for Drug Abuse, told the Times. “There are real roadblocks in terms of helping us advance the field.”
