Suffering From Tachycardia, Low Blood Pressure And Anxiety. Took Narcan. Blood Work Showing Pregnancy. Does It Have Any Effect On Her Baby?
It should not harm
Detailed Answer:
Hi
Thanks for posting your query on XXXXXXX
Naloxone (Narcan) is a Category C medicine. It means that enough research has not been undertaken on humans but lots of research has been done on animals and shows no adverse effects on fetus in animals.
Having told you that, I think that nothing serious should happen. Many women inadvertantly take medicines during initial stages not knowing that they are pregnant. Mostly nothing serious happens. I think for now you can relax and let your daughter relax too. Give her lots of pure water to flush out the extra medicine from her body.
The doctors will do the routine tests like USG during pregnancy and if something comes up, that time you will be able to decide better.
Lastly avoid taking any more medicines during pregnancy. Also a patient legally has the right to refuse any type of treatment, even life-saving procedures can be refused by the patient.
Take care and relax
Dr Vaishalee
Not much effect on fetus
Detailed Answer:
Hi again
I think I was not able to satisfy you with my previous reply. Let me try again.
Here I also want to add that I have seen a lot of patients who took one or another type of medicine while they were pregnant. Sometimes they needed to take the medicine throughout pregnancy. I have read a lot of material on this issue. Thus whatever I mentioned in my previous reply was based on my clinical experience.
Secondly we have to back our answers with research that has been conducted previously.
I am sorry with whatever your daughter had to go through. From your description it seems that your daughter was on continuous infusion of naloxone. Usually one dose is enough to figure out if the patient is taking opiates or not. Since your daughter passed out, the good effects of naloxone may have helped in getting her decreased respiration back to normal. But continuous infusion caused all the effects mentioned by you. It can also cause some damage to lung and heart beats may become irregular. In case the woman is pregnant, the effects are even more exaggerated.
I think she has also been given anti-anxiety or other similar medicines as well. If you can find her medical records from the hospital and let me know the name and quantity of medicines that has been given.
She will stay in this state as long as the medicine is there in the system. It usually takes 24 hours to excrete most of the medicine. The remaining medicine gets excreted in a few more days. Thus drinking plenty of fluids is important to flush out as much medicine as possible.
Since the diagnosis of pregnancy has been made now, the doctors must have changed their prescription accordingly.
Whatever medicine she took, was during the first 2 weeks of pregnancy.
Now coming to the safety of the baby. Most medicines taken during the early stages of pregnancy usually do not have much adverse effect on the baby, unless the medicine is teratogenic. Naloxone till now has come up to be a safe medicine and is not teratogenic. It does cross the placenta and reach the fetus. It may cause some overactivity and heart racing in a mature fetus. If the fetus is just 2 weeks old, it may not have had much of effect.
Anxiety in the mother may worsen the scenario.
In summary, this medicine will have most of the bad effects on the mother but not much effect on the fetus.
Regards
Dr Vaishalee