New treatment for newborns with opioid withdrawal shows promise, study says

(CNN) - A new approach to treating babies exposed to opioids during pregnancy is showing some success.

A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine shows the Eat, Sleep, Console care approach helps newborns get out of the hospital sooner than the current treatment.

Researchers examined the new approach with 1,300 infants at 26 hospitals.

The new method encourages involvement from parents and prioritizes care that doesn’t involve medication.

Instead, parents use techniques such as swaddling, skin-to-skin contact and breastfeeding.

The current approach involves nurses measuring a baby’s withdrawal symptoms before providing treatment such as methadone or morphine.

Researchers say infants using the Eat, Sleep, Console method left the hospital on average after eight days, while babies treated with the standard approach are hospitalized for about 15 days.

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