Medication Assisted Treatment or (Medication
for Addiction Treatment) is an important frontier in ED care of
patients with Opioid Use Disorder. Naltrexone, methadone and
buprenorphine are the medications approved for the treatment of
OUD.
Addiction is a disease that is widely
misunderstood and rarely taught in medical
school.
It is
a dangerous myth that the best treatment of all addictions is
simply abstinence.
The
evolving consensus around OUD is that is best treated with
medication. An opioid addiction should be treated with an opioid
agonist.
MAT
is shown to substantially decrease mortality and morbidity for
OUD.
The
treatment gap for OUD is egregious--as high as 75% in
Colorado.
Emergency department providers can be part of
the solution to this problem by understanding and, when indicated,
initiating proper treatment for OUD.
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