Alternative Methods Studied to Treat Drug Addicted Babies
Babies born to drug addicted mothers have challenges immediately from birth. To help give these innocents a fighting change, scientists and researchers continue to investigate the best drug rehab treatments possible. One focus is to ensure treatment is as comfortable for the baby as possible.
According to a recent Science Daily release, this drug addiction treatment and subsequent withdrawal can be more comfortable if the mother receives a new treatment option while she is still pregnant. This treatment application has also proven to be less expensive and requires a shorter hospital stay.
Peter Martin, M.D., director of Vanderbilt’s Division of Addiction Psychiatry, conducted research that determined newer buprenorphine is at a minimum as good for both the mother and the baby as the standard approach with methadone if both treatment options were combined with a treatment of comprehensive care for the opioid addiction in the pregnant mother.
As Martin stated, the baby is born with an addiction to what the mother consumes during pregnancy. When the babies are born, they are very uncomfortable and incessantly restless. While the outcomes of both treatments appear to be effective and the mothers and babies both did well, the standard of care is significantly higher with the buprenorphine treatment applied during the time of pregnancy.
Buprenorphine is widely used to treat opioid addictions, although it has not been thoroughly studied in the treatment of addicted babies. The results of this study suggest that babies of mothers receiving this drug needed significantly less morphine to treat their neonatal abstinence syndrome and required a shorter treatment period.
