CBS News recently published an article about how the number of pregnant women on painkillers and heroin in the past decade has more than doubled. It’s based on a new study published in the December issue of the journal Anesthesiology, which examined 57 million deliveries between 1998 and 2011 for dependence on opioids or painkillers, methadone and heroin.
They found that depression was five times higher in pregnant women who had abused painkillers or heroin and their dependence on alcohol was 20 times higher than women who didn’t abuse painkillers. These are stats for the pregnant women on drugs, not the babies. That comes next.
The Complications
More discoveries: women on opioids were twice as likely to go into labor early, with 20% of them more likely to need a C-section and 40% more likely to have their water break early. Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR or “the baby is unhealthily small”) increased to seven percent of these women from the normal low of two percent. A stillbirth, or the fetus dying in the uterus, is incredibly rare (0.6% among all women) but those who abused opioids during pregnancy have it at a rate of 1.2%.
But the most disturbing stat of all is that the rate of mothers dying during birth was four times more in opioid abusers. In other words, we cure diseases on space stations and women are dying during childbirth like it’s the 1800s. Dr. Ted Yaghmour from Northwestern University added that abusing drugs during pregnancy also leads to newborns being dependent or going through withdrawals as a “Welcome to Earth” present.
The Critic
The study has its critics, though. Dr. Robert Newman at New York City’s Beth Israel Medical Center says that it “makes no distinction on appropriately prescribed [drugs]and [abused drugs].” The scientists behind the study agreed that they weren’t able to tell the difference but asserted the fact that the results are the same regardless.
Dr. Lisa Leffert from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston says that the study isn’t thorough enough to actually clarify the long-term effects on babies who were born under these circumstances. Dr. Newman from Beth Israel, always trying to ruin the party, says that the “overwhelming conclusion” of all studies is that there are no long-term effects” on the babies born from mothers who abused painkillers during pregnancy. If Newman believes that the drugs that kill half of all people who overdose in America don’t impact babies whose mothers abused them, then get this guy back to medical school, or any kind of school. Every study deserves a critic but there’s not much to battle on this one. The CDC has declared prescription drug abuse an epidemic and the steep rise in it in pregnant women is this war at its ugliest. Only now are we seeing the true impact of babies being born under these conditions, due to the rise in opiate abuse in the past 10 years. We’ve got to wait about another 10 to see the long-term impact.
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