Estimation of life expectancy and the expected years of life lost among XXXX users in the era of opioid substitution treatment (OST) in Taiwan.

@entity4521 @entity1 @entity5047 @entity308
BACKGROUND: Opioid substitution treatment (OST) has been implemented in Taiwan since 2006. We estimated the life expectancy (LE) and expected years of life lost (EYLL) in a cohort of @entity4521 users stratified by OST for comparison. METHODS: A total of 1283 @entity4521 users recruited from 2006 to 2008 were linked to the National Mortality Registry until the end of 2011. Among them, 983 received OST, while 300 did not. Kaplan-Meier estimation for survival was performed, and it was extrapolated to 50 years to obtain the LE using a semi-parametric method. We further estimated the EYLL for both cohorts by subtracting their life expectancies from the age- and sex-matched referents of the general population. Cause-specific standardized mortality ratios (SMRs) were calculated and compared with the national cohort to validate the representativeness of this sample. RESULTS: After extrapolation to 50 years of survival, the estimated average LE and EYLL were 27.4 and 10.6 for OST subjects, respectively, while those of the non-OST were 20.2 and 18.4 years. The all-cause mortality rates (per 1000 @entity1 -years) in the observational period for the OST and non-OST group were 15.5 and 23.9, respectively, representing a 7.5- and 10.2-fold @entity5047 compared to the general population, indicating a high representativeness for our sample. But @entity5047 of suicide mortality elevated 16.2 and 3.1 folds in OST and non-OST group, respectively. CONCLUSIONS: OST saves 7.8 EYLL more than non-OST after accounting for lead time bias. Effective suicide prevention programs could enhance its life-saving effect, especially among those co-morbid with @entity308 .
