Farmaci e allattamento: ancora un dilemma?

Abstract

It is widely believed that many medications are dangerous for infants if taken by nursing mothers. So, they often choose to give up the drug in order to continue breastfeeding or, conversely, to discontinue breastfeeding to take the medication. This occurs even for medications considered as compatible by scientific evidence. The lack of coherent official information on the use of medications during lactation is probably one of the main reasons inducing an excess of prudence, based on presumption of risk rather than on evidence. In addition, literature suggests that breastfeeding training has a crucial role to increase healthcare professionals’ knowledge, attitudes and practices and to improve professional support for breastfeeding, even in case of maternal use of medications or natural products.