Patient Protection: from Compassion and Pragmatism to Research: Reponse to Dr Braillon's Comments

We thank Dr Braillon for his comments on our report of the results of a retrospective study of alcohol consumption among high-risk drinkers a year after they began high-dose baclofen treatment.Let us begin by describing the conditions in which we performed this study because the principal responses to Dr Braillon's interrogations flow directly from them. Our team was in the process of developing a protocol for a randomized placebo-controlled double-blinded trial of high-dose baclofen. While attempting to determine the number of subjects necessary and to estimate the quantity of drug that we would need, we found that the modest literature on our subject was not very helpful. A retrospective survey from the files of two prescribers allowed us to overcome this lack of data and formulate …