To compare the long-term effectiveness of acamprosate (ACP) and disulfiram (DSF) in the treatment of alcohol dependence and their effectiveness in regard to patient characteristics, within a naturalistic outpatient treatment setting.
Baseline data in terms of current addictive behaviour and course of disease differed between groups to the disadvantage of the DSF group; compared to the ACP group, subjects treated with DSF showed a longer duration of alcohol dependence, higher amounts of daily alcohol consumption and more alcohol detoxification treatments in their history.
In follow-up, Kaplan–Meier survival analysis revealed significant differences between groups in the primary and secondary measures of outcome (P always Time elapsed before the first alcohol relapse as well as attendance to outpatient treatment and cumulative alcohol abstinence achieved within outpatient treatment was explicitly longer in the DSF group. A longer duration of alcohol dependence predicted a favourable treatment outcome in the DSF group, while for the ACP group the chances for a successful treatment increased with shorter duration of alcohol dependence.
This study supports the thesis that supervised DSF is an important component of alcoholism treatment, and it appears to be more effective than the treatment with ACP particularly in patients with a long duration of alcohol dependence.
Read Full Abstract
Request Reprint E-Mail: a.diehl@klinikum-braunschweig.de
_______________________________________
