A web-based Alcohol Clinical Training (ACT) curriculum: is in-person faculty development necessary to affect teaching?

Background: Physicians receive little education about unhealthy alcohol use and as a result patients often do not receive efficacious interventions. The objective of this study is to evaluate whether a free web-based alcohol curriculum would be used by physician educators and whether in-person faculty development would increase its use, confidence in teaching and teaching itself.

Methods: Subjects were physician educators who applied to attend a workshop on the use of a web-based curriculum about alcohol screening and brief intervention and cross-cultural efficacy.

Treating homeless opioid dependent patients with buprenorphine in an office-based setting.

Context: Although office-based opioid treatment with buprenorphine (OBOT-B) has been successfully implemented in primary care settings in the US, its use has not been reported in homeless patients.

Objective: To characterize the feasibility of OBOT-B in homeless relative to housed patients.

Design: A retrospective record review examining treatment failure, drug use, utilization of substance abuse treatment services, and intensity of clinical support by a nurse care manager (NCM) among homeless and housed patients in an OBOT-B program between August 2003 and October 2004.

Risk of mortality during four years after substance detoxification in urban adults.

The objective of this analysis was to assess the mortality rate and risk factors in adults, with substance dependence, who are not receiving primary medical care (PC). Date and cause of death were identified using the National Death Index data and death certificates for 470 adults without PC over a period of almost 4 years after detailed clinical assessment after detoxification. Factors associated with risk of mortality were determined using stepwise Cox proportional hazards models.

Hepatitis C infection is associated with depressive symptoms in HIV-infected adults with alcohol problems.

Objectives: Depression is common in persons with HIV infection and with alcohol problems, and it has important prognostic implications. Neurocognitive dysfunction has been reported with chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. We hypothesized that HCV infection is associated with more depressive symptoms in HIV-infected persons with a history of alcohol problems.