[Applicability, duration, and sociomedical course of rehabilitation of alcohol dependency. Current results and perspectives from the insurers' point of view].

Reducing the paucity of German studies on the rehabilitation of alcohol-dependent patients, this article presents current data of Germany's national Pension Insurance Federal Institution. Numbers of applications, grants and use of rehabilitation, length and duration of treatment, percentage of nonattendance, comorbidity, and sociomedical course after 2 years are discussed. There has been a constant increase in numbers of rehabilitative treatment, especially in the outpatient setting with decreased treatment length, a high rate of comorbidity, and improvements in the sociomedical course and vocational integration. Two years after rehabilitation, 87% of inpatients and 92% of outpatients were recontributing to the pension system continuously or sporadically. Despite the still marked deficits in the provision of rehabilitative treatment for addicted patients, rehabilitation plays an important and established role in this field and shows promising clinical results.