The Impact of the Opioid Crisis on Neonates, Children, and Adolescents

Abstract

Although the opioid crisis began nearly three decades ago, it is only in recent years that we have begun to understand how the pediatric community has been affected by what remains a growing public health problem in the United States for Americans across the lifespan. The increased use of prescription and illicit opioids among women of child-bearing age has resulted in a three-fold increase in recent years in neonatal abstinence syndrome, a condition primarily affecting newborns exposed in utero to opioids. Moreover, millions of children and adolescents are now routinely exposed in their homes and communities to prescription and illicit opioids, which have taken a significant toll on the health and well-being of the pediatric community. For toddlers, school-aged children, and adolescents, calls to poison control centers and emergency department visits for opioid ingestions and overdose have increased markedly over the past two decades. During this time pediatric hospitalizations for opioid poisonings more than doubled and the respective mortality rate nearly tripled. The objective of this chapter is to further outline the impact that opioids have had on pediatric morbidity and mortality as well as to explore what measures clinicians, public health officials, legislators, and parents can take to mitigate the harms of prescription and illicit opioids on the young.