APA Meeting Coverage – Research: Failure in Addiction Therapy Usually Seen Early – Patient still using after a week or two? Time to try something else.

“Starting well in a prescription opioid addiction treatment program is no guarantee of long-term success, a researcher said here.

But starting poorly usually means failure down the road, according to Roger Weiss, MD, of McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass.

“People either need to hit the ground running and do well quickly or you need to change something quickly after a couple of weeks,” he said in an oral scientific session at the annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association.

The findings come from a new analysis of the Prescription Opioid Addiction Treatment Study, main results of which were published in 2011, which looked at varying durations of treatment with buprenorphine/naloxone combined with varying intensities of counseling.”

Source: MedPageToday.com – May 21, 2015