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Although patients with alcohol use disorder (AUD) can receive medications that lower risk for return to heavy drinking (e.g., naltrexone, acamprosate, disulfiram), and these medications have been U.S. FDA–approved for decades, many patients with AUD do not receive treatment. Investigators retrospectively evaluated 29,000 hospitalized U.S. Medicare beneficiaries with AUD to determine the prevalence of medication treatment initiation at hospital discharge or within 30 days of discharge.
Only 0.7% of patients received AUD medication treatment at discharge, and only 1.3% received it within 30 days of discharge. In adjusted analysis, the 11% of patients with primary discharge diagnoses of AUD (vs. secondary diagnosis of AUD) were significantly mo…