Readily available treatment is important for opioid addiction, Elizabeth Tracey reports

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Opioid overdoses continue to be a huge public health problem, with new synthetic opioids continuing to be developed. Eric Strain, a substance use disorder expert at Johns Hopkins, says one bright spot is access to treatment is improving.

Strain: I think we're doing better. I think we've really got pretty good glide paths for people who come to an ED with opiate abuse or opiate dependence and want to get treatment and then get on buprenorphine and our of the ED and get referred to a provider. The big problem is a lot of people drop out of treatment especially with buprenorphine, six months generally you're seeing about 50% dropout rate.    :23

There is another choice besides buprenorphine.

Strain: A good alternative is methadone because methadone doesn't have some of the pharmacological limitations that buprenorphine does, so for people of high levels of physical dependence or tolerance methadone may be a better medicine than buprenorphine.    :14

At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.