A study of hospitalized surgical patients on methadone maintenance

It is possible that admission to hospital of methadone maintenance clients requiring treatment for pain with narcotics may result in an increase in methadone maintenance dose and affect subsequent rehabilitation of the client. The hospital admission itself may modify the subsequent outcome of the client. Fifty clients of a Methadone Maintenance Therapy Program were retrospectively evaluated. Twenty-five had been admitted to the Surgical Service of Bellevue Hospital, New York City, for a variety of conditions and for periods ranging from 2 to 43 days; twenty-five were not admitted to the Hospital. Irrespective of whether or not large amounts of narcotic analgesics had been added to the maintenance methadone, patients were discharged on the same amounts of maintenance methadone as on admission and had eventual courses and outcomes similar to the control group when followed for a mean period of 20 months.