Kentucky is ground zero for a tragic epidemic. Hundreds of babies are now being born addicted to the drugs their mothers took while they were pregnant.
It is a disturbing side of drug abuse: babies born addicted to pain pills, cocaine, even heroin.
Over the past decade, the number of drug-addicted babies born in the state has increased by more than 2,000 percent.
In the neonatal intensive care unit at University Hospital, cries from the babies in a darkened room are noticeably different.
"It's a very high pitched cry. Not like, ?I'm hungry.? Not like, ?I'm wet.? ?I'm in pain. I'm in horrible pain,?? said NICU clinical nurse manager Pauline Hayes.
In pain because the newborns are suffering from withdrawal from the drugs their mothers took while pregnant.
The symptoms of their withdrawal mimic that of adults.
?They cannot sleep. They're jittery. Their muscle tone is very tight,? Hayes said
It's even more awful in infants.
?They have vomiting and diarrhea. They can sweat, breathe fast and they can have seizures if it's severe enough,? Hayes said.
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The number of drug-addicted babies in Kentucky has turned an epidemic.
?It was like boom.? It's just taken off, it exploded,? Hayes said.
According to a report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, in 2000, Kentucky hospitals reported 29 drug-addicted babies needing treatment.
Last year, there were 730.
Prescription pain pills are fueling most of the epidemic, but University Hospital said babies are being born addicted to cocaine, heroin, meth, and other drugs too.
The treatments can be intense. A baby girl in the NICU was born addicted to methadone. To treat her addiction, she receives another drug.
?You have to give them morphine,? Hayes said.
Morphine to replaces methadone in the body of the baby girl, born less than a month ago. It eases the pain as she is weaned from drugs.
Other babies, like those addicted to cocaine, must go through the trauma of withdrawal without opiates.
?These babies are inconsolable. There isn't anything you can do sometimes to help them. They will continue to cry. They may cry for hours at a time,? Hayes said.
It costs up to $3,000 a day to treat the addicted babies and it takes time.
?Most of them are there about four to six weeks,? Hayes said.
That adds up to a hospital bill of up to $126,000 per baby.
?The only way we're going to stop addicted babies is to stop addicted moms,? Hayes said.
University Hospital has taken on the challenge and developed a cutting edge program to treat these newborns.
It's a program to treat the drug-addicted babies that's now a model for the country.
Everybody was doing their own thing," said Hayes.
Then neonatologist Dr. Lori Devlin-Phinney and other medical leaders at University Hospital decided they needed a new approach.
"We needed to apply a standard protocol to be able to care for these babies," Devlin-Phinney said.
A team, including doctors, nurses, pharmacists, therapists and others developed that standard for everything from evaluating the babies, to the treatment of each addiction, even down to the darker room where the drug-addicted babies are now taken and all of it worked.
"The protocol has allowed us to be able to give these babies consistent and constant care," Devlin-Phinney said.
The new Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome protocol has cut down on recovery times and saved hundreds of thousands in hospital bills and placed University Hospital's NICU on the cutting edge with other hospitals across the state and around the country copying it.
Most importantly, it has eased those cries from innocent infants who don't have to suffer as much from the pain of withdrawal.
"We're very proud of what we've been able to accomplish," said Devlin-Phinney.
While the program is helping the newborn addicts recover, the mothers often go to social workers or Child Protective Services, who try to help moms break the addiction before the baby goes home.? ?
Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/49845772/ns/local_news-louisville_ky/
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