The problem of alcohol in the medical/surgical patient.
The authors report the results of a computerized data-based study of 845 general hospital patients seen by a consultation-liaison psychiatry service in a major urban hospital. The findings indicate that only 5.2% of the referrals were for the problem of alcohol. Furthermore, the detection rate of an alcohol problem by both the referring physicians and the psychiatric consultants was low (8.3%) as compared with the literature's reported prevalence rate of alcoholism in the general hospital (8.7%-55%). The problem of recognition of an alcohol problem in the medical/surgical patient is explored with particular emphasis on the obstacles to diagnosis--masking of alcoholism by other major psychiatric disease, the categorization of patients by symptom rather than underlying causation, and the lack of sufficient employment of useful diagnostic screening devices.
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000175:diagnosis*; D005260:Female; D006769:Hospitals, General; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D011570:Psychiatry; D012017:Referral and Consultation; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis