There are few studies about the characteristics of Substance Use Disorder patients that relapse, defined by restart of the substance use that motivated the intake, after discharge from a Detoxification Unit.

To analyze the percentage of patients who had a relapse in the following 3 months after discharge and to describe their sociodemographic, clinical and therapeutical characteristics.

We prospectively studied drug dependents patients admitted to our Detoxification Unit from June 2008 to August 2009. Data was gathered at admission on demographic (gender, age), clinical (main abused drug, psychiatric comorbidities, polydrug users) and therapeutical variables (hospitalisation duration, prescribed treatment). Patients were followed up for 3 months and assessed for relapse at 1 and 3 months by clinical interview, alcohol screening test and/or urinalysis. Results from patients with and without relapses were compared.

The study sample included 103 patients (77,7% men, average age 38,31±9). At month 3, 57,3% of the patients had relapsed. We found significant differences between the relapse and the non-relapse group on the percentage of polydrug users (68,6% vs 31,4%, p=0,05), on heroine as main drug of abuse (76% vs 24%, p=0,05) and psychiatric comorbidities (60,8% vs 39,2%, p=0,04), being psychotic disorders the most frequent. No significant differences were found between the 2 groups concerning therapeutical variables.

More than half of the patients that ended the detoxification process relapsed in the first 3 months. Polydrug use, opiate dependence and having a psychiatric comorbidity might be considered as risk factors for relapse.