This Article  • References  • Full text PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Similar articles in JAMA  Social Bookmarking   What's this?

Paul Cushman, Jr, MD
St Luke's Hospital Center New York

JAMA. 1976;236(19):2171.

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

To the Editor.—

The recent article entitled "Successful Detoxification From Methadone Maintenance" by Riordan et al (235:2604, 1976) may leave the reader with some erroneous impressions. That some patients can be successfully detoxified after a period of time in methadone treatment has been well established (226:747, 1973).^1,2 That some of these detoxified patients can function well (ie, in a stable, narcotic-free state) has also been documented. Lest the reader get the impression that this is a common result of methadone maintenance treatment, it is important to examine the frequency with which this outcome is achieved in relation to the total number of patients entering treatment.

The Yale group classified 26 patients as drug-free and doing well out of a total population that clearly exceeded 242 (the subgroup listed as having been in treatment for at least 90 days) or 10.7% of the subtotal. This figure is in close agreement . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

CiteULike    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter     What's this?