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Updated: Dec 5, 2025
Assessment and Evaluation of the High Risk Neonate: The NICU Network Neurobehavioral Scale
Published on: August 25, 2014
Development and Validation of a Model to Predict Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome
Stephen W Patrick1, James C Slaughter2, Frank E Harrell2
1Department of Pediatrics, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN; Department of Health Policy, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN; Mildred Stahlman Division of Neonatology, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN.
Objectives:
To develop and validate clinical risk prediction tools for neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS).
Study Design:
We developed prediction models for NAS based on a set of 30 demographic and antenatal exposure covariates collected during pregnancy. Data (outpatient prescription, vital, and administrative records), were obtained from enrollees in the Tennessee Medicaid Program from 2009 to 2014. Models were created using logistic regression and backward selection based on improvement in the Akaike information criterion, and internally validated using bootstrap cross-validation.
Results:
A total of 218 020 maternal and infant dyads met inclusion criteria, of whom 3208 infants were diagnosed with NAS. The general population model included age, hepatitis C virus infection, days of opioid used by type, number of cigarettes used daily, and the following medications used in the last 30 day of pregnancy: bupropion, antinausea medicines, benzodiazepines, antipsychotics, and gabapentin. Infant characteristics included birthweight, small for gestational age, and infant sex. A high-risk model used a smaller number of predictive variables. Both models discriminated well with an area under the curve of 0.89 and were well-calibrated for low-risk infants.
Conclusions:
We developed 2 predictive models for NAS based on demographics and antenatal exposure during the last 30 days of pregnancy that were able to risk stratify infants at risk of developing the syndrome.
