Issues with drug abuse for mothers and their babies are an ongoing focus of neo-natal health care providers. These matters were the focus of a legislative meeting in Lexington Monday.
Lawmakers gathered at the University of Kentucky Hospital as part of the oversight of heroin legislation passed earlier this year. Legislators heard from Dawn Forbes, a neonatologist at Kosair Children’s Hospital. Forbes says of late, a lot of attention is being paid to opiate use, including heroin addiction. “The reason we focus so much on it is, one, it’s a huge problem," Forbes said. "But two, it really is the one thing that we’ve actually started to vet out reasonably good protocols. Infants that are exposed to cocaine or SSRI’S or marijuana or amphetamines, all of these other things, we don’t have great treatment protocols."
Forbes says alcohol use is rarely a factor in women who struggle with opiate addiction. She says alcohol, which is a sedative, tends to blunt the effects of a high.
Lon Hays, chair of UK Hospital's Department of Psychiatry, also testified before the legislative panel. “Whenever I would make rounds on the unit at Samaritan up until two years ago, I would hear about oxycodone," Hays says. "I would hear about hydrocodone. I would rarely ever hear the word heroin. When I made rounds on call the week before last, any woman that I saw mentioned heroin."
Hays says one key to caring for these women and their babies is long-term, coordinated follow up.
Henrietta Bada, a professor in the Department of Pediatrics, told the panel she’s studied drug exposed children for years. In addition to the actual use of opiates, Bada says household environment can be a factor as well when it comes to children. “If you have a good environment and the mothers are treated, then you will have a better outcome," she said. "But if you have a mother who’s treated, and then the environment is still lousy or bad, then you cannot see an improvement."
Bada says there's been a 48 fold increase in the number of Kentucky babies born with neonatal withdrawal problems from the year 2000 through 2014.
