He is less than two weeks old, but he has the telltale signs of a baby in pain: a sore on his chin where he has rubbed the skin raw, along with a scratch on his cheek. He suffers from so many tremors that nurses watch him around the clock in case he starts seizing, or stops breathing.
The baby is one of many infants born dependent on drugs. He is being treated at East Tennessee Children’s Hospital in Knoxville, where doctors and nurses are on the front lines fighting the nation’s prescription drug epidemic. Drug abuse in the state is ranked among the nation’s highest, according to some estimates.
The hospital expects to treat 320 children this year for drug dependence, known as neonatal abstinence syndrome — up from 33 in 2008. Last year, the hospital treated 283.
“It blew us away,” Andrew Pressnell, a nurse at the unit, said of the dramatic increase. “We didn’t know what to do.”
States across the US have passed laws to crack down on prescription drug abuse, including in the poor, mountainous Appalachian region, where the drugs were easily available as they flowed north from so-called “pill mills” in Florida.
The US government does not track the number of babies born dependent on drugs. A study published last year in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that more than 13,000 infants were affected across the US in 2009.
Tennessee is the first state to track the number of babies born dependent on prescription drugs, said Stephen Patrick, a neonatologist at the University of Michigan and one of the authors of the study.
The preferred way to treat drug-dependent babies at the Tennessee hospital is by giving them small doses of an opiate and gradually weaning them off, said John Buchheit, who heads the neonatology unit.
So every few hours, the staff will give the infants morphine to help them get their symptoms of withdrawal under control. They will be weaned off over a period of either days or weeks, he said.
“The problem is the side-effects of morphine,” Buchheit said. “The one we worry about — the biggie — is that it can cause you to stop breathing.”
Roughly half of the neonatal unit’s 49 infants are being treated for drug dependence. For those infants, the pain can be excruciating. The doctors and nurses who treat them say the babies can suffer from nausea, vomiting, severe stomach cramps and diarrhea.
“Diarrhea so bad that their bottoms will turn red like somebody has dipped them in scalding water and blistered and bled,” said Carla Saunders, a neonatal nurse practitioner who helps coordinate the treatment at the hospital.
They have trouble eating, sleeping and in the worst cases suffer from seizures. Many suffer from skin conditions and tremors. And they are inconsolable.
A small army of volunteers called “cuddlers” help the staff by holding the infants, rocking them and helping them ride out their symptoms.
Bob Woodruff, one of the 57 cuddlers for the hospital, gently rocks Liam, a 10-day-old infant who was born drug-dependent. The 71-year-old retired professor moves from room to room, wherever he is needed.
It is impossible to be unmoved by these infants, Saunders said.
“If there is anything that could drive the people in our society to stop turning their heads [away] to adult addiction, it’s going to be the babies,” she said.
Part of the solution to drug--addicted babies is better education. Tennessee Department of Health Commissioner John Dreyzehner is part of a group lobbying the US Food and Drug Administration to put a warning on prescription drug bottles of the dangers of taking drugs while pregnant.
‘GROSS NEGLIGENCE?’ Despite a spleen typically being significantly smaller than a liver, the surgeon said he believed Bryan’s spleen was ‘double the size of what is normal’ A Florida surgeon who is facing criminal charges after allegedly removing a patient’s liver instead of his spleen has said he is “forever traumatized” by that person’s death. In a deposition from November last year that was recently obtained by NBC, 44-year-old Thomas Shaknovsky described the death of 70-year-old William Bryan as an “incredibly unfortunate event that I regret deeply.” Bryan died after the botched surgery; and last month, a grand jury in Tallahassee indicted Shaknovsky on a charge of manslaughter. “I’m forever traumatized by it and hurt by it,” Shaknovsky added, also saying that wrong-site surgeries can happen “during
Former Chinese ministers of national defense Wei Fenghe(魏鳳和) and Li Shangfu (李尚福) were both sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve over graft charges, state news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday, underscoring the severity of the purge in the military. The armed forces have been one of the main targets of a broad corruption crackdown ordered by Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) after coming to power in 2012. The purges reached the elite Rocket Force, which oversees nuclear weapons as well as conventional missiles, in 2023. Earlier this year they escalated further, resulting in the removal of the top general in
New Zealand is open to expanding its frigate fleet beyond its current two vessels, with New Zealand Minister of Defence Chris Penk saying “no options are off the table” as the government weighs buying new warships from Japan or the UK. The government yesterday said it is looking to replace its two aging Anzac-class frigates, which were both commissioned almost 30 years ago. The UK’s Type 31 and Japan’s Mogami-class warships are the options under consideration. Speaking in an interview, Penk said there is potential to increase the number of frigates the nation purchases. “We need a certain amount of capability as a
The Philippine Coast Guard yesterday said it deployed aircraft to issue radio warnings to a Chinese research ship in a disputed area of the South China Sea “swarming” with vessels from Beijing’s so-called maritime militia. The research vessel Xiang Yang Hong 33 (向陽紅33), which is capable of supporting submersible craft, was operating near a reef in the contested Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島), which Taiwan also claims, the Philippine Coast Guard said. The Chinese ship was deploying a service boat toward the Spratly’s Iroquois Reef on Wednesday when it was spotted by a coast guard plane, “confirming ongoing unauthorized [marine scientific research]
RSS