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	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: Dr Collins and colleagues¹ studied anesthesia-assisted vs buprenorphine- or clonidine-assisted heroin detoxification and naltrexone induction. The article and the accompanying editorial by Dr O’Connor² showed that detoxification is not in itself a treatment for dependence.

Clinicians have developed various accelerated methods of opioid detoxification to avoid the discomfort of withdrawal. Anesthesia-assisted detoxification has recently received considerable public and media attention. The debate on efficacy has been blurred by intensive marketing techniques used to commercialize the method, including submitting the term as a registered trademark.³ Randomized controlled clinical trials can help to resolve the controversies, and the study by Collins et al and that of McGregor et al⁴ are important steps toward this goal.

The results of a randomized controlled clinical trial that we conducted⁵ also support the ineffectiveness of anesthesia-assisted detoxification compared with clonidine detoxification. We randomly assigned 70 opiate-dependent patients to undergo either anesthesia-assisted or clonidine-assisted . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Bernard Favrat, MD
bernard.favrat@chuv.ch
Medical Outpatient Clinic

Jacques Besson, MD
Substance Abuse Division
Department of Psychiatry
University of Lausanne
Lausanne, Switzerland

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