Prescription opioid and heroin abuse have been increasing steadily year after year, and continue to be a serious national problem. A sequela of the increase in opioid abuse has been an increase in the number of infants born with opioid dependence. These infants often require costly, prolonged stays in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) for drug withdrawal treatment. The authors studied a p...

OBJECTIVE Rooming-in, the practice of caring for mother and newborn together in the same room immediately from birth, is preferred for the general postpartum population but is not yet standard practice of care for newborns of substance-using women. Such newborns are usually separated from their mothers and admitted to a neonatal intensive care unit and treated for substance withdrawal if necess...

OBJECTIVE To assess the outcomes of infants born to mothers receiving methadone for the management of pain in pregnancy. DESIGN A retrospective audit was conducted of neonatal outcomes in 19 cases in which methadone was used in the management of maternal pain (pain group). Twenty four cases in which methadone was used for maintenance of opiate addiction in pregnancy served as a comparison gro...

In the face of the current Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS) epidemic, there is considerable variability in the assessment and management of infants with NAS. In this manuscript, we particularly focus on NAS assessment, with special attention given to the popular Finnegan Neonatal Abstinence Score (FNAS). A major instigator of the problem of variable practices is that multiple modified version...