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April 30th, 2012
04:16 PM ET
'One baby per hour' born already in withdrawalThe cry of a baby withdrawing from prescription opiates is shrill, as if the child is in terrible pain. "It's a very high-pitched, uncomfortable cry," said Dr. Aimee Bohn, a pediatrician with Mountain Comprehensive Health Corporation in Whitesburg, Kentucky. "It's like the kid has been pinched." That characteristic cry is increasingly ringing through the hallways of hospitals nationwide, according to new research. "That's about one baby per hour," said Dr. Stephen Patrick, lead author of the study, which was published online in the Journal of American Medical Association. "We were surprised by it. That's a startling increase." Perhaps more startling - that one baby per hour figure marks about a three-fold increase in the number of babies born with NAS since 2000; and during the same time period, opiate use among expectant mothers was also jumping, increasing nearly five-fold. "There has been an incredible increase in the number of opiate pain relievers prescribed in the U.S.," said Patrick, a fellow in the University of Michigan's Division of Neonatal-Perinatal Medicine. "We think that might be part of the increase we are seeing." Patrick says he undertook the study after he and colleagues from other hospitals began noticing more and more babies in their neonatal intensive care units with hallmarks of NAS, which includes increased irritability, respiratory and feeding problems, low birth weight and, rarely, seizures. Using hospital billing data from the Kids' Inpatient Database, they identified which newborns were discharged with an NAS diagnosis to arrive at a national estimate. Bohn says that a couple of years ago, one baby per hour born withdrawing from opiates would have surprised her. Today, she says, it is not surprising based on what she is seeing in eastern Kentucky, part of an area known as "ground zero" of prescription drug abuse. "Women you would never guess have a problem because they are functioning in society come in addicted," said Bohn. Those mothers, said Bohn, are having babies with NAS at a rate of 1-2 cases per week, on a busy month, at her hospital. And that does not include babies who are exposed to prescription painkillers in utero, but somehow escape the overt symptoms at birth. "A lot of times, the babies are a little jittery, they shake when they first come out," said Bohn. "They become cranky, they don't sleep and they develop terrible diaper rashes." Related story: Hospital seeing more babies born exposed to prescription drugs The average hospital stay for a baby born withdrawing from painkillers is 16 days, according to the JAMA study, and 77% of the time, babies with NAS were charged under state Medicaid programs. "What we found is that the total U.S. hospital bill quadrupled over the time frame [2000-2009] nearing 720 million dollars," said Patrick. "That is extra incentive for state governments to engage in developing solutions to prevent this."
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And surprisingly, most of these babies are black
That statement is completely untrue.
WRONG!!! babies born addicted ton opiates are mostly white. Get your facts straight!
How ignorant is your statement . I've been a neonatal nurse for 7 years and guess what, the majority are white. Its a shame what I see these babies go through and these babies are not admitted for 7 days, it takes weeks if not months for them to recover from the withdrawal symptoms. This does not take into consideration the longterm affects these babies are exposed to. Most of these babies are also put up for adoption, and by law the adoptive parents must be notified of their medical history as well as their mothers. for example, Many times as soon as these prospective adoptive parents find out the babies mom used cocaine, they usually decide not to adopt the baby. Its very unfortunate & the only ones who suffer are the babies.
I live in the second ranked county in the united states for opiate abuse, and I maybe know 2 black people who do pills-and they're old men who have never been pregnant with an addicted fetus. They're all white. How dumb do you have to be to say something like that? Jeeeez
there is about 75% of whites compared to 13% of black in USA, logically white women use more drugs then.
I am always astounded at the ignorance posted in open forums. Drug addiction is a problem that covers every spectrum of our society. But, for a neonatal RN to call somebody ignorant and then discuss cocaine when the article is about opiate addicts, well, did you even read the story?
How cruel can pharmaceuticals companies and the associated weaklings, rush-to-a-drug, people be. These babies deserve to have their own lives.....not the life you gave them. The drug life.
The majority of drugs are not needed and, only defeat your immune system and natural repair capabilities. This is especially true for allergies. Allergies do not actually exist for anyone. Does anyone want me to prove this? And, yes, I can prove it. Please let me know if you want to get rid of your allergies. The only reason I will offer this help is because pharmaceutical companies have made addicts and have caused the damage you read in this article. I guarantee I can stop your allergies ....and, I'll be rewarded by the statement, "He was right". That's it. No money, No nothing.
I would assume there is something other than a mere opinion to back up your statement, unfortunately for these children this sort of thing goes across race and culture. Bottom line it is the children we should be focusing on and assisting their care as the effects of the drugs they have become addicted to in-utero wears off. Perhaps even assisting to educate not only the mothers but other on the effects of taking such medications on the unborn to try and lessen the incidence of these happenings,
That comment not only reflect how ignorant you are but also that you are an A hole.
thats a white lie buddy they give them to more white people then black buddy
noone-that is completly untrue. I see more white babies on here than black! i am white and can tell you ive known waaay more white" people that are into opiotes than black people ok,,, racist ass
does it really matter who abuses what classes of drugs more? I don't think it does. Fact is there are plenty of people who abuse all kinds of drugs from all races. It is a problem for mothers expecting and sickening that they would willingly subject their children to their drug habits.
Troll bait.
How did this story turn out to be racist? Every ethnicty is racist. Why does everything and every topic turn out to be racist?? Are we all such as all ethnicties feel sorry for ourselves? Think about it.
No, you are sooo very wrong. Look to places that suppress women, like Utah and many southern states. Those women may not drink, but they can sure take pills like there is no tomorrow. Doctors in Utah write prescriptions like they are giving out candy on Halloween.
Several people close to me found it easy to get drugs in Utah from doctors. Two people especially close to me found it extremely easy, and they got addicted to oxycontin. The doctors did not require regular exams or suggest alternatives.
Utah will become known as the prescription drug capital of the USA. Drug those women and then they will STFU!
are doctors perscribing pregnate women these drugs? that is the number one question! or are they self seeking these drugs. what are the long term affects on the babys? that the questions we should be asking now!!!
the trash don't need prescriptions
Yes, unfortunately there are doctors out there that do prescribe opiates or synthetic opiates like Tramadol to some mothers. These doctors should have their licenses revoked however many slip under the radar. Expecting mothers can get away with getting pills for back pain, etc. very easy in some of the prompt care type places because they rush patients through, do not keep good records, etc.
I could go to 3 "prompt care" type places in my town of 30,000 people and get 3 scripts for vicodin, I would have 90 5mg pills prescribed to me from different pharmacies and I'd buy them outright without insurance, paid with cash. It's pretty easy really, no one checks ID for these things, anyone can pick them up for anyone else, etc.
wow, cnn sure has found a more distubing picture than when the story first ran, way to sensationalize cnn. PATHJETIC
of course should be PATHETIC, but kind of lost the emphasis now
I luv dem gayboyz and I luv my oxy!! I been pumpin dem chumps in da plump rump for years!!!
um...just give them naxolene...they will be fine.
Its Naloxone and sometimes the withdrawal symptoms depending on exposure levels can be as dangerous as the addiction itself.
Noone,
How do you know they are black. The article does not say so.
Shhh, it's alright, he's just a racist republican.
I'm sure a lot of these mothers were not using legally obtained drugs, however, they are handed out like candy. In the last three years I have been given some form of opiate three times. Each time, I raised an eyebrow and actually requested something different, or asked if I could just take some ibuprofen. I was assured I'd be crazy not to fill the script before the pain set in. Either I'm one tough chick when it comes to pain (I'm pretty sure that isn't true), or these things are WAY over prescribed.
Almost every American opiate addiction begins in a physician's office and the weed man is doing prison time. Go figure!
Everyone has different tolerances to pain. You sound like a real trooper. When I pulled a muscle in my back I was prescribed the same things – muscle relaxers & opiate pain killers. I filled it just in case – but they still sit in my medicene cabinet 6 mos later. I took motrin & lots of soaks with epsom salts and a heating pad – I was good to go within a week.
I've had some pretty major surgeries and take as little of these painkillers as I can. I don't get the addiction side of it at all though, All they do is make me sleep and get constipated lol!
Wonder what percentage end up being state dependents.
Silly little poltroon. you know they're not state dependent, they'll be dependent on the trans national pharmacy corporations. you silly little conservative with your silly little spin.
would be a good idea to lose medicaid benefits if you are cought with drugs or give birth to an addicted baby..otherwise we are subsidiznig drug abuse..
You disgust me. You think its a good idea to have innocent babies possibly suffer because they are born addicted. You suck.
Banana is on to something - how do people qualified for Medicaid, so are low income, get money for drugs? They are abusing the variety of government subsidies to support their habit.
Instead of cutting off Medicaid, it's important to set limits on addicts who pay for their habit with welfare, public housing, etc.
We have to get tough to stop this. Otherwise, taxpayer funds go right to the drug trade. Mexico is begging us to lower our demand for illegal drugs. How much drug money is sourced directly from the US government?
I'm with Thinkin on this one. You totally suck!
PhillyRN: And how many people who would be willing to turn their lives around and moreover, how many babies of addicts getting clean or NOT getting clean who remain with their parents (yes it will continue to happen despite what you think SHOULD happen) will suffer when there isn't enough money to thrive on?
Hard to believe an RN would be so ignorant about drug abuse.
Actually, its kind of shocking. Glad I'm not I'm philly!
I'm not sure how it would be for opiates, but at the hospital that my wife worked at they would drug test for key drugs. I believe they were Heroin, Cocaine, and Meth. If any of those were found in the mother's system when they delivered the baby was removed and put into state custody. If they found people with weed in their system, they would not report.
Legalize? Yes.
Reblogged this on Tyler's Heart.
Hey all you ho-mos!! Let's get down and get bizzzy!! I been waiting to polish your tool!! Give me dat spooo and I'll drop my stool!! Let booze it up and hit da sauce....after schlobin da knob I gonna have to floss. Dem pubes get stuck but I got it down...when I clean up da mess I never frown. So let's hit da bed and pound dat hole...when we done I will smoke more pole!!
I be one of da biggest ho-mos around!! All u fruits wanna hook up and pound each other silly?? Let's polish each other's knobs and then drain dat vein!!
Obviously, this directly correlates with the vastly reduced access to clinics + abortion providers. In some states, you can't even get near any clinic, much less a free clinic. When doctors + nurses cannot practice safely, everyone suffers.
Society as a whole suffers.
Access to affordable healthcare, including rehab, is what's desperately needed here!
In Obama's America, not surprising more people are doing drugs to escape the hell. Unfortunately, kids pay the penalty.
Silly little conservative with your silly little spin. These drugs are made by large trans national corporations, you know, those "people" that run your republican party?
Don't you just love it when you criticize Obama and your instantly branded a "conservative" by some neo liberal Nazi fuq?
How else do you get women to quit complaining? My Mormom sisters who live in Salt Lake City are heavily addicted. The doctors in Salt Lake City whip out those Rx pads to shut them up.
And now a word from our Cry Babies:
Waah1 You guys bought the cheap drugs. Waah!
Doctors: "We don't understand it!"
Well he did that by ditching his Blackberry, I magaend that by doing the following things:- No sound for new mail- Mobile phone set to silent- Work phone set to a very low but noticeable levelI discovered that ring tone of my mobile and the ringing of my work phone irritated me a lot when I was coding. So, silencing the former (actually to just one beep) and lowering the level of the later, gave me my keyboard back plus some KLOCs to my employer.
Even if the mom is kicking the habit on methadone. Once the child is conceived. It is addicted. So if they stop cold turkey the baby dies. This is heartbreaking. Addiction crosses all race,class and age. What not is being told is the long term effects. This will cause brain damage. Only seen through behavior issues as they grow. It's not psychological. So these humans suffer there whole lives.
There's probably a wide range of potential birth defects, and developmental disorders in store in the future for these poor kids.
Methadone is given for heroin addiction. This article is talking about addiction to prescription pain medication. Not entirely the same thing. People just can't deal with a little bit of pain and keep taking the pills.
first, this is absolutely disgusting and i wish i could slap the mothers who are doing this to their children. that's AWFUL. and second, regarding the last paragraph, WHY SHOULD MONEY BE THE BIGGEST INCENTIVE TO STOP PRESCRIPTION OPIATE ABUSE IN PREGNANT WOMEN????? are the negative health impacts not enough to motivate our politicians to take action??
This is waht we are getting from the "greatest medilcal care" in the world. Drug companies making billions selling legal drugs, doctors making lots of money prescribing these drugs and people willing to shell out all that money to get high on drugs. Shameful. The drug providers should be all in jail.
Well i my self have 4 kids n think u shoukd not take pillsor smoke while preganat people wanna say stuff bout pills n drugs well wat bout all the ciggs dat are bein smoked threw out the whole 9 months that is just as bad some people really need to grow up n stop judgeing other people yall aint no better then us broke people nut the differnces is when u never had money u care bout yo family more then all the stuff u can buy
Nikki, you definitely hit it on right there. I read somewhere else that another expert is saying that this is probably just being all blown over since the days of the crack babies. In any case, I sometimes wonder if it has just come down to people just wanting someone to blame for anything not right with anyone in the world. Its always something. Like seriously, does everyone think that every woman that gets pregnant is always in perfect health to begin with? Even drugs to help you get pregnant have possible harmful affects that could be detrimental to the development of a child, but they'll still do it.
as an adult many many years ago i kicked an addiction to percocet and it an was horrifiing event i ever went thru and i did it cold turkey. I can't, really fathom a baby or child going thru anything like that, i have tears in my eyes reading this, what a sorrowful event for these kids. I am a man in my 50's and you bet bet i cry and care. nsevieri@gmail.com
if the baby survives this, the only good news is, they'll never remember it.
In other news there are no such thing as weed withdrawl babies.
This is sad, but not as sad as CNN taking money from scam artists like Tax Master and the total transformation program, why do you allow this garbage CNN? Can't get legitimate people to advertise on your channel?
We are a nation of pill poppers, from birth to death, we have a pill for everything.
I don't pretend to be a doctor, scientist or even very smart. However, maybe the increase in drugged up babies has something to do with the increase in the amount of drugs newborns are given, and also the increase in drug potency. Like I said I am not a super smart person by any means... but that is my opinion.
Well you are right about one thing.....not sure what painkillers you think newborns are getting on a regular basis....
Crackheads breed like rabbits. It's their primary source of income.
What is surprising about babies being born addicted to drugs in a nation that does not advocate openly (because of religion) the use of contraceptives? You religious nut cases have such a horrible effect on the world and do not even realize it. . . Well, here is the proof. There. Are. No. Gods!
Bonehead .. religion has very little to do with phama pushing drugs on doctors to increase sales...it's all about the Benjamins and always has been..
Thanks big pharma ... americas legalized pushers...
It is horrible to see newborn's suffering so badly from the very moment that they have entered the world. I wish there could be a way to taper the methadone down until these mother's were completely clean for their last trimester. If tapering is safe enough to do with newborns, then it stands to reason that it would be safe to use in pregnancy. The only problem with this method would be, of course, having the mother's cooperation. Regrettably, their cooperation would be the most tenuous part of tapering down. In addiction the only thing that has the addict's complete attention and devotion is their substance of choice. Seeing newborn babies in such pain deeply grieves me...Hopefully, this story will make a difference to a woman in this situation, and she will put her child's well being first. Hopefully...
America : land of the crackhead
I bet there are a lot in Utah. I have relatives there. The doctors prescribe painkillers at an alarming rate. Two close relatives are addicted to oxycontin with no symptoms that warrant their level of drug prescriptions. The doctors just keep prescribing more and more and more. And now they are zombies. The doctors should be charged. Salt Lake City doctors suck. They just suck. No exams needed. Just pull out that Rx pad.....and she goes away.
Maybe they should throw your relatives in prison along with the doctors for USING the drugs.
Those women should be charged with child abuse. I'm sorry you're an addict but a baby shouldn't have to suffer for your weakness.
Admittedly, for a mom-to-be to choose to subject her unborn to these poisons is disturbing, but often enough the true culprit for this issue is not the medicaly uneducated mother. Instead, it is the medicaly educated physician who has been entrusted with the legal power and authority to care for the developing life, and yet chooses to perscribe something that he or she knows well the long term effects but would prefer to concentrate on the pharmaceutical pay-outs. After all, the mother is the one who will suffer through the years of heart ache in watching her 'behavior issue' cry his or her poor, unacceptable selves to sleep every night, while the good doctor toasts his success on buying a new yacht with not even a second thought to that child. But of course we are always so quick to blame a mother...
Just another indication of how self-centered and narcissistic our society has become. More and more; folks today want immediate gratification and will do anything and hurt anyone to get it. Our children, our future leaders, are growing up being exposed to this phenomenon on a daily basis. I dread the state of our society in twenty years. To the Women of our Country who are using drugs, please rethink your behavior. You know that terrible pain and/or exhaustion you feel when you have gone without a dose. It’s bad isn’t it? I know the feeling. I have experienced it numerous times, and I have to say that I would NOT wish it upon anybody else, much less an innocent newborn baby. Please, learn to respect your bodies and the young lives growing in them.
If the mom had been smoking weed, these babies wouldn't be born in withdraw. Pills are lgal, alcolhol is legal and crack or cocain is freely available on every street in America – but there is a total clamp-down on weed. Just one more example of how @ss backward America is.
well if the withdrawal sucks so bad.....just give em the drugs.....
crack babies lol
Those who give birth to babies while on drugs should be executed, or at least sterilized.
This is mostly due to the doctors pushing pills for a profit in sales! They are legal drug dealers just trying to make a buck!
If an addict is someone physically dependent on the drug, then I'm not just addicted to opiates, but also the drugs which stop my Parkinson's symptoms and keep my heart rate down. Maybe we shouldn't be looking at "opiate addiction" but at what causes the pain in the first place.
We adopted 7years ago. Our child was born addicted to opiates. The withdrawal was a horrible experience and that child now has a severe language delay, sensory processing problems and bad muscle tone. Yes, drugs cause brain damage in the baby. Lots and lots of therapy has been required and this kiddo isn't performing at grade level. This has long lasting effects, it isn't just a matter of getting these kids through the withdrawal. This is a maddening problem and so sad that it is so wide spread. As an aside our kiddo is white.
good grief
I'm not surprised at some of the comments, considering there is an epidemic of stupidity in our country (such as people saying its 1-2 babies born addicted per hour is not that bad/ not really a problem, or that Marijuana would solve the problem. These people and those women who take drugs to cope with pain are simply weak and pathetic human beings with no regard for anyone other than themselves. Childbirth is natural. Deal with it and deal with life.
Every race pops pills, does drugs, etc. No race is perfect and it doesn't matter what race does it the most because they're all doing it. Who cares.What point do people need to prove once they blame the other race. We are all equal. So shut your face with your race card bs.
This country is clearer being overrun by drug pushing doctors and those addicted to painkillers and other opiates find the drugs have such a hold on them, they can't even stop long enough to care about the innocent baby they carry.
http://www.painpillabuse.com
Grace you after your hangzhou massage chuckling, your affect today
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