Assessing the relationship between maternal opiate use and neonatal mortality

Abstract

Aims/Design. We undertook a number of meta-analyses to estimate more precisely the relationship between neonatal mortality and use of opiates in three groups of women. First, women who continued to use illicit heroin throughout pregnancy; secondly women stabilized on methadone at the time of conception or shortly after and thirdly, women who use heroin well into pregnancy with late entry into methadone treatment, or who continued to use illicit heroin during pregnancy while receiving methadone. Findings. The pooled estimates of the relative risks of neonatal mortality for separate heroin and methadone use were both near unity: 1.47 (95% CI 0.88-2.33) and 1.75 (95% CI 0.60-4.59), respectively..