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Pregnancy: Drugs

Asked by Laurence TurnerLabourDepartment of Health and Social CareTabled Answered 3 March 2025UIN 32711

The question

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many cases of neonatal abstinence syndrome there were in each of the last 10 years.

Answered by Karin Smyth

The following table shows the number of cases of neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) since 2014:

Year

Token Person ID

2014

1,287

2015

1,279

2016

1,198

2017

1,184

2018

1,195

2019

1,083

2020

1,058

2021

1,163

2022

1,095

2023

1,056

2024

1,107 (provisional)

Source: NHS England

Notes:

  1. Token Person ID - for this analysis, each patient has been counted once against each year in which they were recorded as having a hospital episode with a valid diagnosis. A patient is only counted once in a given year, regardless of the number of episodes they may have had.
  2. NAS is typically identified at or shortly after birth, but there are also cases where the condition is not immediately apparent. Therefore, the data includes any patients aged less than one year old where the diagnosis was recorded to ensure that all relevant data are presented.

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