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The rates of pregnant mothers and newborns being admitted to hospitals for problems related to substance abuse have soared in Pennsylvania, according to a new policy brief issued by the Pennsylvania Health Care Cost Containment Council.

The rates in Luzerne County are higher than the state rate, but not the highest among all 67 counties.

According to the brief, the number of neonatal admissions due to substance-related issues statewide rose by 250 percent since 2000, from 5.6 per 1,000 neonatal hospital stays to 19.5 per 1,000. All told, 2,691 neonatal hospital stays were related to substance use.

The increase for maternal hospital stays — dealing with childbirth or other pregnancy-related issues — wasn’t as steep, rising by 119 percent. But the rate was higher to begin with, climbing from 14.8 per 1,000 maternal hospital stays to 32.4 per 1,000. In raw numbers, there were 4,615 maternal stays related to substance use in 2015.

The brief did not compare county-level data over time, but did provide a snapshot for each county: the rates for 2015. In Luzerne County, 23.3 of every 1,000 neonatal hospital stays involved substance-related issues, while 29.1 of every 1,000 maternal hospital stays did.

Statewide, the two most prevalent problems in neonatal substance-related stays were neonatal drug withdrawal or neonatal abstinence syndrome, making up 82 percent of drug-related stays.

Infants can be born dependent on drugs or alcohol used by the mother while pregnant, then suffer withdrawal symptoms after birth.

According to the report, the most common symptoms for newborns in substance-related stays were respiratory distress, prematurity, low-birth weight and difficulty breathing.

All told, newborns and infants under the age of 1 statewide spent 27,835 days in hospitals for substance use problems in 2015, and the stays cost an estimated $20.3 million.

If there is a sliver of positive news in the report, it may be that maternal stays involving alcohol and cocaine decreased between 2000 and 2015. Alcohol-related stays dropped 36 percent, from 2.7 to 1.8 per 1,000 maternal stays, while those related to cocaine decreased 61 percent, from 7.4 to 2.9 per 1,000 stays.

But that was more than offset as the growing abuse of opioids, including heroin, skyrocketed among expectant mothers, from 2.8 per 1,000 hospital stays in 2000 to 16.8 per 1,000 in 2015 — an increase of 510 percent.

Luzerne, Lackwanna, Carbon and Schuylkill counties all had substance-related neonatal hospital rates above the state rate, with the four counties ranging above 20 but below 25 per 1,000, but 19 counties had higher rates.

The same four regional counties had substance-related maternal stay rates between 25 and 30 per 1,000, but 27 counties had rates higher than 30 per 1,000.

“These findings stress the alarming impact that substance use problems have on new mothers and babies in communities across the Commonwealth, PHC4 Executive Director Joe Martin said in a media release accompanying the report.

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By Mark Guydish

[email protected]

Reach Mark Guydish at 570-991-6112 or on Twitter @TLMarkGuydish.