Medical authorities are witnessing explosive growth in the number of newborn babies hooked on prescription painkillers, innocent victims of their mothers' addictions.
The trend reflects how deeply rooted abuse of powerful narcotics such as OxyContin and Vicodin has become. Prescription-drug abuse is the nation's fastest-growing drug problem, classified as an epidemic by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
"I'm scared to death this will become the crack-baby epidemic," Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi says. She has asked the Legislature to establish a task force on drug-exposed babies and develop prevention strategies.
National statistics on the number of babies who go through withdrawal are not available, but scattered reports show the number of addicted newborns has doubled, tripled or more over the past decade.
In Florida, the center of the illicit prescription-drug trade, the number of babies with withdrawal syndrome soared from 354 in 2006 to 1,374 in 2010, according to the state Agency for Health Care Administration.
The American Academy of Pediatrics convened a committee this year to revise its treatment guidelines for addicted babies.
Mark Hudak, who was on the committee, says the problem is not confined to Florida. The number of drug-exposed babies "has escalated across the country," says Hudak, a professor of pediatrics and division chief for neonatology at the University of Florida College of Medicine in Jacksonville.
Examples:
Maine Medical Center in Portland treated 121 babies dependent on prescription painkillers in 2010, up from 18 in 2001, says Geri Tamborelli, nursing director at the Family Birth Center and neonatal intensive care unit.
East Tennessee Children's Hospital in Knoxville adopted a program to treat drug-exposed babies a year ago. Of the 579 babies admitted to the neonatal intensive care unit since then, 106 needed treatment for withdrawal from oxycodone and other painkillers -- up from fewer than 40 in 2008. In September, painkiller-addicted babies filled nearly half the neonatal intensive care unit's 60 beds, the most ever.
At St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, 40 babies born in the first nine months of this year needed special care because of painkiller exposure -- a 33% increase over all of 2010, says Ken Solomon, director of neonatology at three hospitals in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area.
The babies experience withdrawal a few days after birth. They scream, twitch and vomit. They have trouble breathing and eating. They rub their noses with their fists so much their skin bleeds.
"It's the newborn equivalent of an adult who goes off the drugs cold turkey," says Lewis Rubin, director of newborn services at Tampa General Hospital and chairman of neonatology at the University of South Florida.
"It's really horrible to see."
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