Drug addiction maintenance treatment and quality of life measurements

Giedrius Vanagas, Žilvinas Padaiga, Emilis Subata¹

Department of Preventive Medicine, Kaunas University of Medicine, ¹Psychiatry Clinic, Faculty of Medicine, Vilnius University

Key words: drug addiction, maintenance, quality of life, measurement instruments, method selection.

Summary. Quality of life measurements are increasingly incorporated into trials of pharmaceuticals. This can be applied to a wide range of medical areas including drug-addiction maintenance treatment programs. Maintenance treatment has been demonstrated to be an effective treatment for opioid addiction but still lacks quality of life specific measures to measure the maintenance program effects and until now there have been only few attempts to assess the impact of opioid dependence and its treatment on the drug-addicted patients’ quality of life. The aim of this article is to describe quality of life concept, measurement instruments, selection criteria and its applicability in the drug addiction maintenance studies.

Correspondence to G. Vanagas, Department of Preventive Medicine, Kaunas University of Medicine, Eivenių 4, 50009 Kaunas, Lithuania. E-mail: vanagas.g@kmu.lt

Received 19 May 2004, accepted 3 September 2004