Caring for Babies With Opioid Withdrawal – AAMC News

Read article - As the number of infants with opioid withdrawal rises, academic medical centers are developing promising new methods to treat these infants and support their mothers. In 2015 and 2016, nearly 10% of babies born at the Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth-Hitchcock in New Hampshire were at risk for opioid withdrawal. Like at Yale Children’s, leaders there decided to promote more connection between moms and babies. Physicians began allowing infants to remain in their mothers’ rooms for the full hospital stay in 2014, explains Alison V. Holmes, MD, MPH, pediatric hospitalist and associate professor of pediatrics at Geisel School of Medicine at Dartmouth. The result was less use of medication, fewer withdrawal symptoms, and shorter hospital stays.