Patients Who Take Medication for OUD Found Less Likely to Seek Hospital Care, Study Finds

Medication for opioid use disorder —which include buprenorphine, methadone, and extended-release naltrexone—is known to improve health outcomes in patients with opioid use disorder (OUD). Areport published Monday inPsychiatric Services now suggests that patients who take their medication for OUD (MOUD) more frequently are less likely to end up hospitalized or in the emergency room than those who take their MOUD less frequently.These findings, as reported by Manesh Gopaldas, M.D., of New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University Irving Medical Center and colleagues were based on a secondary analysis of data from a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)comparative effectiveness trial. In the NIDA trial, individuals seeking treatment for OUD were randomly assigned to receive extended-release naltrexone or buprenorphine-naloxone for 24 weeks. The average age of the 570 participants who received medication was 34 years old; most were male (70%), White (74%), and had completed high school or its equivalent (78%). They were followed for 36 weeks.Adherence to MOUD was defined as the percentage of days in a month in which a participant took a prescribed medication. The participants were grouped into three levels of adherence: low (less than 20%), medium (20% to 79%), or high (80% or greater).Gopaldas and colleagues found that those who took their medication 80% or more of the time used inpatient addiction treatment 17.87 fewer days and acute care (such as emergency...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: adherence buprenorphine extended-release naltrexone medication for OUD methadone MOUD Psychiatric Services taking medication Source Type: research