Mortality in a cohort of opiate and XXXX users in Perth, Western Australia.

@entity1 @entity146 @entity167 @entity284 @entity4944 @entity204
AIMS: This study compares the hazard of @entity204 among opiate and @entity4944 using clients who accessed drug treatment with individuals who had no specialist treatment contact between 1985 and 1998. DESIGN, SETTING, @entity1 : This was a retrospective cohort study of 4280 drug-using individuals (2887 opiate users, 1393 @entity4944 users) admitted to Perth metropolitan hospitals or Perth @entity146 institutions between 1985 and 1998. Of these, 1469 attended Next Step Specialist Drug and @entity167 Services (928 received @entity284 and 541 attended counselling or support groups) and 2811 had no contact with this service. METHODS: Data from two drug treatment programmes were linked with hospital morbidity, @entity146 services and the mortality database using record linkage. FINDINGS: The results show that @entity1 who were currently in drug treatment had a lower hazard of @entity204 compared with non-clients and those who had ceased treatment. Those who had ceased treatment more than 6 months ago had 7.0 times the hazard of all-cause @entity204 and 8.4 times the hazard of drug-cause @entity204 . Opiate users were at 1.4 times the hazard of all-cause @entity204 and 2.4 times the hazard of drug-cause @entity204 compared with @entity4944 users. Males were at 1.79 times the hazard of all-cause @entity204 and, unexpectedly, were found to be at 2.69 times the hazard of drug-cause @entity204 compared with females. CONCLUSIONS: Treatment protected clients from premature @entity204 compared with @entity1 who did not receive treatment and also those who ceased treatment. While @entity4944 users had a lower risk of mortality compared with opiate users, the full extent of the relationship between @entity4944 use and mortality needs to be examined further.
