Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT): Overview and Provider’s Perspective

Abstract

The current opioid crisis or epidemic necessitates that providers, families, and patients should all be familiar with the various modalities of treatment that are available for the opioid dependent individual. Abuse of illicit and prescription opioids has caused the deaths of over 600,000 Americans from 1999 to 2016, with close to 150 deaths daily [1]. In the U.S. opioid use disorders (OUDs) have become epidemic in the past two decades. In 2015 there were 12,727 deaths in the U.S. from natural or semisynthetic opioids, and 12,989 deaths due to heroin. Excluding methadone this represents a 72.2% increase over 2014 in the death rate due to synthetic opioids such as fentanyl [2].