The Smallest Victims. Collateral Damage From The Opiate Crisis

The ever growing opiate crisis has other smaller, innocent victims with babies being born addicted to opiates and experiencing withdrawal symptoms.

There was a 5X increase in babies born with with an opiate addiction from 2000 to 2012, with an estimated 21,732 infants were born with addiction in 2012.

Every 25 Minutes, 1 Baby is born suffering from opiate withdrawal.

Newborns with opiate addiction were more likely than other babies to have low birthweight and respiratory complications.

Children born dependent on opiates suffer withdrawal and other health problems, including vomiting and diarrhea, shortly after birth.

They are often found to have high pitched screams, difficulty sleeping, irritability, and their symptoms can last days or even weeks.

Of course, they can’t tell us what they are going through.

Opiate withdrawals are hard enough on adults.

Can you imagine what the babies are going through?

Babies going through withdrawal may have other serious problems including seizures and growth delays.

Evidence published in a 2017 Journal of Pediatrics article finds that these babies may experience life long suffering including serious problems in school.

According to the researchers,

“By the time the children reached grade 7, scores for children with NAS (opiate addiction at birth) were lower than scores for other children in grade 5.”

Average length or cost of hospital stay for the babies is shown on the bottom left graph.

Newborns born with addiction stayed in the hospital for an average of 16.9 days compared to 2.1 days for those without addiction.

The hospital costs for newborns with addiction were $66,700 on average compared to $3,500 for those without opiate addiction.

The bottom right area of the graph shows the rising incidence of opiate use during pregnancy.

These are shocking statistics.

No one ever sets out to be addicted to an opiate.

Unfortunately, most addicts started by being put on a prescription opiate pain reliever for a musculoskeletal problem.

More often than not it’s back pain that leads to the prescription.

There is a better solution for most cases of pain. It doesn’t involve drugs and seeks to correct the cause of pain rather than simply treating the symptoms. Chiropractic Care is that solution.

 

References

https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/infographics/dramatic-increases-in-maternal-opioid-use-neonatal-abstinence-syndrome

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/article-abstract/2592302

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2017/images/01/16/neonatal.abstinence.syndrome.and.high.school.performance.pdf