Patients with addiction are common in psychiatric or any other practice. You’re going to see patients who have these issues, so it’s good to be prepared and able to focus on treating addiction, as well as to be part of a growing group of specialists.

We are in the middle of an opioid crisis in the US, with many lives lost daily to opioid-related deaths. Pharmacotherapy with methadone, buprenorphine, or naltrexone represents an important tool for clinicians during this crisis. But just how good are these medications in saving lives? A recent retrospective cohort study evaluated the effects of methadone, buprenorphine, and naltrexone on all-cause and opioid-related mortality in the 12 months after an opioid overdose.

The post-test for this issue is available for one year after the publication date to subscribers only. By successfully completing the test you will be awarded a certificate for 1 CME credit.

After reading these articles, you should be able to…

Most of us are pretty familiar with Alcoholics Anonymous (AA), and asking about AA attendance and participation is routine during appointments with patients trying to curb their alcohol use. But what about Narcotics Anonymous (NA)?

To set the stage for understanding medical management, we need to go back about 20 years to the inception of the landmark COMBINE Study. This study was a very large clinical trial for alcohol use disorder (AUD) that compared naltrexone, acamprosate, and their combination, and also looked at two behavioral interventions.

On May 16, 2018, the FDA announced its approval of Lucemyra (lofexidine) as a drug to help patients withdraw from opioids. Like clonidine, lofexidine is an alpha-2 agonist, but it is touted as causing less orthostatic hypotension and therefore being somewhat safer to use.