Letters: Fighting nausea during pregnancy hasn't gone well
Thank you, Anndee Hochman, for reassuring pregnant women that there is a safe and effective treatment for nausea and vomiting during pregnancy ("A pregnant question," Sunday).
ISSUE | PREGNANCY
Fighting nausea
Thank you, Anndee Hochman, for reassuring pregnant women that there is a safe and effective treatment for nausea and vomiting during pregnancy ("A pregnant question," Sunday).
This new and very expensive drug, Diclegis, actually is a resurrection of a treatment that was available from 1956 to 1983. The prescription medication Bendectin combined the same two ingredients - vitamin B6 and doxylamine - that are in Diclegis. Bendectin was remarkably effective, but the enormous costs of defending lawsuits blaming the drug for birth defects forced the company to stop producing it. There was never a proven risk.
The discontinuation of Bendectin led to a doubling of hospital admissions for vomiting in pregnancy from 1980 to 1985. The excess hospital costs of admissions from 1983 to 1987 in the United States were an estimated $73 million. A generation of women suffered needlessly and expensively.
Dr. Mark B. Vizer, Lansdale