Objectives—To determine the prevalence and patterns of alcohol and drug use in patients with major trauma. Methods—Consecutive trauma patient enrolment, 24 hours a day, was envisaged with anonymised patient data on gender, age band, and mechanism of injury collected. The study group had surplus plasma quantitatively analysed for ethanol concentration, and urine samples were initially screened, ...

OBJECTIVES To determine the prevalence and patterns of alcohol and drug use in patients with major trauma. METHODS Consecutive trauma patient enrollment, 24 hours a day, was envisaged with anonymised patient data on gender, age band, and mechanism of injury collected. The study group had surplus plasma quantitatively analysed for ethanol concentration, and urine samples were initially screene...

BACKGROUND Brief screening instruments for co-morbid personality disorders could potentially have great value in substance abuse treatment settings. METHODS We assessed the psychometric properties of the 8-item Standardised Assessment of Personality - Abbreviated Scale (SAPAS) in a sample of 58 methadone maintenance patients. RESULTS Internal consistency was modest, but similar to the origi...

Mortality rates in drug-dependent patients in substitution treatment remain a matter of debate. Although several retrospective toxicological or forensic postmortem studies on this issue have been conducted, few prospective studies have addressed this problem. In a nationally representative sample of 2694 opioid dependent patients in substitution treatment either with methadone or buprenorphine ...

An open randomized study lasting 12 months was performed to evaluate the efficacy of methadone or buprenorphine to suppress alcohol use in two hundred and eighteen heroin addicts with alcohol dependence. Daily maintenance doses of methadone were 80, 120, 160, and 200 mg/day, while doses of buprenorphine were 8, 16, 24, and 32 mg/day. As expected, both treatments were able to reduce both heroin ...

I read with interest your letter about my study ‘‘benefit effect of naloxone in benzodiazepines intoxication.’’ I thank you for your good comments, but I think it is necessary to explain some things. Opioid antagonists are used infrequently in the management of overdoses with nonopioids such as ethanol, clonidine, captopril and valproic acid. The mechanisms for each of those, though undefined, ...

Most clinicians believe that clonidine has minimal abuse potential. Originally introduced as an antihypertensive agent in 1974, clonidine is inexpensive and has well-known and tolerable side effects. In recent years it has been used in a wide variety of clinical situations, including the treatment of opiate dependence and numerous psychiatric disorders in both adults and children. 1 Despite its...

UNLABELLED Acute cerebellitis is usually infectious, post-infectious or post-vaccination. Rarer causes include toxic ones. The clinical presentation is usually benign, however, severe cases with brainstem compression may present as coma. Regarding three pediatric clinical cases, the authors make a brief review on this entity, with particular emphasis on its causes and imaging findings. CASE R...

Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT) is among the most widely studied treatments for opiate dependence with proven benefits for patients and society. When misused, however, methadone can also be lethal. The issue of methadone diversion is a major concern for all MMT programs. A potential source for such diversion is from those MMT patients who receive daily take home methadone doses. Using a r...