Drug addiction during pregnancy: correlations between the placental health and the newborn's outcome - elaboration of a predictive score.

During pregnancy, drug addiction represents one of the most dangerous situations. Each drug can badly affect the fetal development and, when the pregnancy is over, the negative influence continues in the newborn which is exposed to many risks, in particular the withdrawal syndrome. Since it is difficult to predict the newborn's outcome only on the basis of the kind of drug assumed by the mother during pregnancy, we propose the idea of a score based on the placenta's state of health. The aim of the study is to correlate the placental score to the withdrawal symptoms graveness. Our retrospective study includes 35 newborns exposed in uterus to illegal and legal drugs. We used the Finnegan's scoring system to quantify withdrawal symptoms and the placental score, based on the anatomopathological analysis, to assess the placenta's health. The newborns included in our study have been divided into two groups depending on the result of the placental score (< or =2 or > or =3). We found a significant statistical difference between the newborns whose placental score was low (< or =2) and those whose score was high (> or =3): the second group showed severe withdrawal symptoms for a longer time during the hospital stay (p = 0.014).