Category: Neonates
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Umbilical Cord Tissue: Faster Answers; Better Outcomes
Umbilical Cord Tissue: Faster Answers; Better Outcomes My last blog was all about screening neonates for substances of abuse and why we don’t screen often enough. I didn’t answer that question – because I don’t understand why we don’t, but you can read the blog here: https://the4csofaddiction.wordpress.com/2023/12/01/knowledge-is-power-and-more-is-readily-available-through-neonate-screening-for-drugs-of-abuse/ Now, let’s say we learned our lesson, and…
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Knowledge Is Power, and More Is Readily Available through Neonate Screening for Drugs of Abuse
Every single baby born in the US is required to be screened for phenylketonuria (PKU), which is “a rare condition in which a baby is born without the ability to properly break down an amino acid called phenylalanine” (Medline). Annually in the US, 1 in every 10,000 to 15,000 babies born is diagnosed with PKU…
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Test It, and You Will Know
How many people have Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASDs)? Mental illness? Substance use disorders (SUDs)? The disease of addiction? …in the US? What about in Canada? The United Kingdom? Czechoslovakia? We think we have statistics, but as everyone knows, statistics lie. As an example, think about surveying a community regarding whether or not a sports…
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Syphilis or FASDs? Why Not Address Both?
Wisconsin is having a spate of congenital syphilis cases, so much so that Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services issued a memo to healthcare providers, including health departments and tribal health clinics, about the need to test pregnant people for the bacteria that causes the infection. The memo indicates that “The number of congenital syphilis cases…
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Luck or Fate? Do I Have an FASD?
This blog has been edited from the original. Last week I had the privilege of traveling to Washington, DC, to be part of FASD United’s Impact Week. I met a fellow Wisconsinite, and we started devising a plan for more advocacy in our state; I met with an aide from my Congressman’s office to discuss…
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Cold Cuts, Sushi, and Alcohol
I googled the three questions below and copied the first answer that popped up: “Can I eat cold cuts while I’m pregnant?” “The safest course of action to protect your baby is to avoid deli meats until after pregnancy. If you plan to eat deli meats anyway, we highly suggest cooking them until they are steaming.…
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Worst Outcomes for Babies
Two noteworthy articles bleeped onto my radar on the same day recently. The first was a post about “Alcohol Use, Screening, and Brief Intervention Among Pregnant Persons — 24 U.S. Jurisdictions, 2017 and 2019” and the other was “2023’s Best & Worst States to Have a Baby” from WalletHub. I fully realize that WalletHub is…
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Bias Against Babies
Bias is defined as “prejudice in favor of or against one thing, person, or group compared with another, usually in a way considered to be unfair.” This topic comes up often regarding testing pregnant patients for misuse of drugs. For example, in April 2023, JAMA reported that “Black patients, regardless of history of substance use,…
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Whose Safety Is Being Secured?
Recent headlines have shown wide-ranging ideas about what should happen when those with substance use disorders (SUD) have babies born with unprescribed drugs, including alcohol, in their systems. The American Medical Association cautions “Don’t criminalize pregnant patients with substance use disorders,” and it seems that Ohio has taken that advice to heart, given this inflammatory…
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Legal ≠ Harmless
Somehow along the way, we’ve made a distinction between “hard” drugs and, well, other drugs, as though only “hard” drugs cause problems. We’ve forgotten that those other, less “hard” drugs are also dangerous. We’ve also stopped thinking of alcohol as a drug at all, despite it being one of the most abused and dangerous drugs…
Guided by Guida 