Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome: Physiotherapy interventions

An interdisciplinary approach is essential to providing the best possible treatment for a newborn with neonatal abstinence syndrome. If a woman uses drugs, nicotine, alcohol or psychotropic medication during pregnancy, this can have serious consequences for the unborn child. Newborns are treated with medication; in addition, physiotherapy support is available to alleviate the symptoms. According to current scientific understanding, this clinical picture remains insufficiently researched. As the symptoms are comparable to those of a preterm infant, approaches drawn from the Bobath, Vojta, Castillo-Morales and craniosacral therapy methods can be applied to this condition. Future studies should build on existing approaches to generate more evidence-based knowledge demonstrating their effectiveness. Research involving infants is particularly complex in terms of ethical standards and long-term studies. Furthermore, as a newborn's nervous system develops very rapidly, it is difficult to distinguish whether a change was caused by the intervention or by natural development.