Clinical trial NCT00513708: Facilitating Aftercare for Alcohol Detox Patients
Official title: Helping Alcoholics Link to Substance Abuse Treatment Programs After Being in the Hospital for Detoxification
Study type: INTERVENTIONAL
Overall status: COMPLETED
Phase: NA
Conditions: Alcohol Abuse
Alcohol Dependence
Keywords: Detoxification
Treatment
Lead sponsor: State University of New York at Buffalo
Sponsor class: OTHER
Collaborators: name: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA)
First posted: 2007-08-09
Enrollment: 150
Sex: ALL
Minimum age (years): 18
Standard ages: ADULT
OLDER_ADULT
Accepts healthy volunteers: no
Allocation: RANDOMIZED
Intervention model: PARALLEL
Primary purpose: TREATMENT

Brief summary: The purpose of this study is to determine whether peer visits (known as "12th Step Calls") and professional counselors (using "Motivational Enhancement Therapy") are effective helping alcoholics link to substance abuse treatment programs after being in the hospital for detox.

Detailed description: For those with an alcohol use disorder, the decision to seek detoxification treatment often represents a desire or willingness to change drinking behavior. This gives clinicians with the opportunity to intervene and improve the lives of these individuals. Even patients admitted involuntarily or who have been coerced may be amenable to change. Therefore, inpatient alcohol detoxification treatment offers an opportunity to prepare these patients for and link them with aftercare treatment.

Unfortunately, clinicians have little to guide them on how the current standard of care for alcohol detoxification might be improved. Improvement in clinical practice is ideally driven by clinical research, but there is little recent published information to guide the development of evidence-based pharmacological or psychological practices or interventions in detoxification settings. As a result, alcohol detoxification treatment has changed little over the past 25 years.

Taken as a whole, the literature suggests that the outcomes of inpatient detoxification are less than optimal. A limited number of published studies suggest that a majority of these patients are not linked to any aftercare following inpatient detoxification treatment and return to drinking within a few weeks of hospital discharge. However, there is some evidence to suggest that interventions, performed while the patient is hospitalized, could encourage patients to initiate involvement in aftercare (i.e., professional treatment and/or mutual self-help following hospitalization) and to decrease drinking or initiate abstinence. Motivational Enhancement Therapy and Twelve-Step Facilitation are two interventions that show promise.

The study proposed in this study addresses this issue by testing two brief interventions, Motivation Enhancement Therapy (MET) and Peer-Twelve Step Facilitation (P-TSF, also known as "12th Step Calls"), which have shown potential to enhance initiation of a period of abstinence and engagement in treatment and/or self-help programs among alcohol detoxification patients.

Eligibility criteria: Inclusion Criteria:

* Male and female inpatients 18 years of age or older.
* Participants will have a current DSM-IV diagnosis of alcohol abuse or dependence.
* Able to understand/speak English
* Participants will have signed a witnessed informed consent.

Exclusion Criteria:

* Cognitive impairment (e.g., mental retardation)
* Participants who meet current DSM-IV criteria for bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or dementia
* Participants who are homeless, without contact person
* Participants enrolled in a methadone maintenance treatment program.

Primary outcomes:
measure: Linkage to Alcohol Behavioral Therapy Counseling (i.e., "Aftercare")
timeFrame: 1 month
Secondary outcomes:
measure: Relapse to Drinking
timeFrame: 30 days
measure: Completed Inpatient Treatment
timeFrame: 90 days
Other outcomes:
Locations:
city: Buffalo
country: United States
facility: Erie County Medical Center
state: New York
Study officials:
affiliation: State University of New York at Buffalo
name: Richard D. Blondell, MD
role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR
References:
citation: Blondell RD, Frydrych LM, Jaanimagi U, Ashrafioun L, Homish GG, Foschio EM, Bashaw HL. A randomized trial of two behavioral interventions to improve outcomes following inpatient detoxification for alcohol dependence. J Addict Dis. 2011 Apr;30(2):136-48. doi: 10.1080/10550887.2011.554777.