OMAHA — Babies, parents and medical professionals in Nebraska are involved in what local doctors called a groundbreaking clinical study to improve outcomes for infants exposed to opioids.
“It’s about getting mothers and babies the support they need to have a successful start in life,” said lead investigator at the local research site, Dr. Ann Anderson Berry. “This is a good investment and the right job to do.”
Anderson Berry, Deputy Director of Pediatric Research at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, is also Director of the Child Health Research Institute, a partnership between UNMC and Children’s Hospital & Medical Center.
Omaha-based CHRI is one of 26 hospitals in 18 states participating in the Diet, Sleep, Console for Neonatal Opioid Withdrawal Study that enrolled 1,307 babies.
Early results have just been published in the New England Journal of Medicine. A 2-year follow-up is ongoing.
According to Anderson Berry, researchers have found that the eat-sleep-comfort approach is more effective than traditional methods of treating opioid-exposed infants, helping them to be medically ready for discharge. This shortened the time required for maintenance by nearly seven days.
Also, 63% fewer newborns needed opioid drug therapy compared to exposed infants cared for with the usual approach, she said.
Safety outcomes at 3 months of age were similar between the two groups.
This research is funded by the National Institutes of Health’s Support to End Addiction Long Term Initiative.
Sometimes it is the basic interventions that we need to assess… such as family unit use rather than drug use.
– Dr. Ann Anderson Berry, Child Health Research Institute
Anderson Berry said the study gave Nebraska an opportunity to represent an effort that, in addition to positioning babies to get off to a better start, could be rewarded with reduced hospital costs. said.
She said continued research may also reveal benefits to the education system and workforce availability.
Overall, she called the study “an excellent example of getting back to basics in medicine.”
UNMC and other health systems across the country are often recognized for their “incredible high-tech interventions” and “the amazing work we do on the cutting edge”.
But Anderson Berry added, “Sometimes what we need to evaluate is more basic interventions, such as family unit use, than drug use.”
Newborns exposed to opioids can suffer from tremors, excessive crying, and sleep and feeding problems. have used the Finnegan Neonatal Abstinence Scoring Tool. Finnegan’s approach raises concerns about subjectivity and an overestimation of the need for opioid medication, according to a UNMC statement.
In this study, non-pharmacological treatments in a hypoallergenic environment and increased family presence, swaddling, and skin-to-skin contact were prioritized. The process emphasized that family members, not nurses, were the primary caregivers.
Indeed, parents had hospital beds to sleep in to stay close to their babies. I said I will.
According to UNMC, the eat-sleep-console approach was developed about eight years ago but had not been rigorously evaluated in a large and diverse population of infants with neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome before trials. rice field.
“This study included rural and underserved communities hard-hit by the opioid crisis,” said Dr. Abe, director of the Environmental Impact Program for the Children’s Health Impact Program at NIH. “These findings promise to improve outcomes and address the long-term needs of opioid-exposed infants and their families,” said Matthew Gilman in a statement.
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