RESUMO
INTRODUCTION: The medical identification of an addiction (use disorder) often results in inpatient admission with a view to its definitive suspension. However, for other chronic diseases, inpatient admission is indicated for specific situations and the objective is not the definitive suspension of the chronic disease. Our goal was to clarify addiction as a chronic disease and to determine explicit indications for inpatient admission. METHOD: Three-stage face validity study: (1) from the analysis of consensual definitions, search by the subset theory whether addiction can be considered as a chronic disease; (2) Develop generic indications for inpatient admissions based on the analysis of chronic disease care pathways validated by the HAS (French Health Agency) and apply them to addiction; (3) Validate by Delphi expert consensus method the determined indications. RESULTS: Step (1) showed that the definition of addiction allowed to include it in that of chronic disease. Step (2) determined 7 indications for inpatient admission of a patient with a chronic disease, and its application to addiction identified 15 indications for inpatient admission of a patient with addiction. In step (3), the Delphi method yielded consensus on 14 of the 15 indications. CONCLUSION: By clarifying addiction as a chronic disease, we were able to determine 14 indications for inpatient admission of a person with an addiction and to distinguish them from the long-term care of addiction. These explicit indications can help the general practitioner or community psychiatrist to better manage patients with addiction on the basis of their expertise with chronic diseases management.
