Course and Outcome of patients with Alcohol dependence syndrome following community de-addiction treatment and a hospital based de-addiction treatment: A Comparative study

BACKGROUND: Alcohol is causally related to over 200 illnesses, and also imposes a huge economic burden on the country with absenteeism, and decreased productivity. Recently there has been a dramatic increase in alcohol consumption in India, with over 62.5 million users and 10.6million being dependant users. In India we have hospital based de addiction, in tertiary care hospitals as the main modality of treatment for this, but outcomes are not promising., and not many community based studies have been done. AIM OF THE STUDY: To compare the effectiveness of a community based de-addiction treatment with traditional traditional hospital based de-addiction offered at a psychiatric in-patient facility in a tertiary care centre. METHODOLOGY: Patients were given de-addiction treatment at Vedapatti RHC and followed up and the outcomes studied for 6 months. The outcomes were compared with patients who underwent de addiction treatment in the department of psychiatry at the medical college. Primary outcome measures were abstinent rates at the end of 6 months. The secondary outcome measure included drug compliance, duration of follow up, number of group visits and drinking percentage. RESULTS: The socodemographic variables of the two samples were mostly comparable. The abstinent rates (=abstinent and = occasional lapses) at the end of 6 months were for the community sample was 84% vs 50% for the hospital sample, which was statistically significant (p = 0.017). The community sample had longer duration of follow up, better drug compliance. The drinking percentage also showed significant reduction compared to baseline in both the groups. CONCLUSION: This study shows promise in some areas, further research is needed so that it can serve as a new model for delivering de-addiction services