Informing the Development of a Standardized Clinical Definition of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome: Protocol for a Modified-Delphi Expert Panel
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Neonatal abstinence syndrome (NAS) is a postnatal withdrawal syndrome that most commonly results from prenatal opioid exposure. Every 15 minutes, an infant is born in the United States with signs of NAS. The field lacks a standardized clinical definition of NAS, complicating discussions on programmatic and policy development to support opioid-exposed mothers and infants. OBJECTIVE: The goal of this paper is to describe a protocol for a systematic expert panel process to inform the development of a clinical definition of NAS. METHODS: We will conduct two three-round online modified-Delphi panels using the ExpertLens system and will follow the recommendations for Conducting and REporting of DElphi Studies (CREDES). One panel will focus on developing key components of a clinical definition of NAS, and the second panel will focus on neonatal opioid withdrawal syndrome (NOWS), which is a term that has come into use to differentiate opioid-exposed infants from infants exposed to other substances in utero. However, there is lack of agreement on the precise clinical definition of NOWS and how it is distinct from or overlaps with NAS. Each panel will complete two rating rounds and a discussion round using a similar protocol. We will analyze all rating data descriptively and determine the presence of agreement within and between the two panels. We will also perform thematic analysis of the qualitative comments to contextualize the panel findings. RESULTS: The panels were convened between October 29 and December 17, 2020. Their results were disseminated and discussed at a national conference on NAS that took place on March 17-18, 2021. CONCLUSIONS: A standardized clinical definition of NAS will help to better characterize NAS incidence and to design effective clinical, public health, and policy interventions to support opioid-exposed mother-infant dyads. INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID): DERR1-10.2196/25387.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.232 | 0.200 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.005 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.008 | 0.006 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.005 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.006 | 0.013 |
| Research integrity | 0.007 | 0.010 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.042 | 0.011 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".