Doctors Struggle to Treat Youngest Victims of Opioid Epidemic

CHICAGO (AP) — Two babies, born 15 months apart to the same young woman overcoming opioid addiction. Two very different treatments. Sarah Sherbert's first child was whisked away to a hospital special-care nursery for two weeks of treatment for withdrawal from doctor-prescribed methadone that her mother continued to use during her pregnancy. Nurses hesitated to let Sherbert hold the girl and hovered nervously when she visited to breast-feed. Born just 15 months later and 30 miles away at a different South Carolina hospital, Sherbert's second child was started on medicine even before he showed any withdrawal symptoms and she was allowed to keep him in her room to encourage breast-feeding and bonding. His hospital stay was just a week. "It was like night and day," Sherbert said. The different approaches highlight a sobering fact: The surge has outpaced the science, and no one knows the best way to treat the opioid epidemic's youngest patients. Trying to cope with the rising numbers of affected infants, hospitals around the United States are taking a scattershot approach to treating the tremors, hard-to-soothe crying, diarrhea and other hallmark symptoms of newborn abstinence syndrome. "It's a national problem," said Dr. Lori Devlin, a University of Louisville newborn specialist. "There's no gold-standard treatment." With help from $1 million in National Institutes of Health funding, researchers are seeking to change that by identifying the practic...
Source: JEMS: Journal of Emergency Medical Services News - Category: Emergency Medicine Authors: Tags: Patient Care News Source Type: news