CLINICAL-THERAPEUTIC NOVELTIES REGARDING OPIOID ADDICTION-LITERATURE REVIEW.

Opioid addiction is a phenomenon which greatly increased in frequency, becoming a debilitating disease that profoundly affects psychosocial functioning of patients, poses a real social problem because of the costs involved in their health care and also because of the patients' absenteeism and their decreased efficiency in the field of work. Opioid addiction presents clear criteria for diagnosis, requiring a complex treatment that first and foremost involves opioid agonists and antagonists, which raises many issues regarding doses, the safety profile and optimal therapy schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]