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Different interventions are available and currently offered for prevention, treatment and rehabilitation of drug and alcohol problems. The choice of one specific intervention in preference to another one is usually guided by common sense, intuition, wisdom gleaned from experience, ideology and, to a lesser extent, evidence.
The vogue for evidence-based health care is particularly important for addictions, where personal beliefs may have a strong influence on the types of treatment provided in different settings. Clinicians and policy makers need accessible, up to date, objective evidence regarding the effectiveness of interventions offered to the community.
Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are the most powerful research design to evaluate effects of specific health care interventions. However, it is impossible to keep up with the number of RCTs undertaken. It is estimated that over 20 000 randomized controlled trials are published in biomedical journals every year. A search on MEDLINE and other relevant databases revealed at least 2000 RCTs and Clinical Controlled Trials (CCTs) published up to now, mentioning the term "substance abuse".
People tend to rely on some form of review or editorial to summarize the evidence on the benefits of different approaches to treatment. There is increasing recognition of the need for reviews to be conducted systematically in order to avoid bias. Often the methods of the reviewing process itself...