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Monday, November 12, 2007

Substance abuse in pregnant women. Experiences from a special child welfare clinic in Norway
BMC Public Health 2007, 7:322, 11 November 2007

Substance abuse during pregnancy may harm the foetus and can cause neonatal abstinence syndrome. Exposure to alcohol and other substances can influence the child for the rest of its life.

A special child welfare clinic was set up in 1994 in Kristiansand, Norway, targeting pregnant women with substance abuse problems in the county of Vest-Agder. Pregnancy is not an indication for opioid replacement therapy in Norway, and one of the clinic's aims was to support the drug dependent women through their pregnancy without any replacements.

The object of this paper is to describe concurrent health and social problems, as well as the predictors for stopping drug abuse, in the clinic's user group.

Four (4.5 percent) of the women that completed their pregnancies did not manage to reduce their substance abuse. All the others reduced their substance abuse considerably. The odds ratio for stopping substance abuse within the first trimester was significantly associated with stopping smoking (O.R. 9.7) or being victims of rape (O.R. 5.3).

A low cost and low threshold initiative organised as a child welfare clinic may support women with substance abuse problems in their efforts to stop or reduce their substance abuse during pregnancy.

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