[Comparative analysis of a population hospitalized for alcohol "dependence" and "abuse" with other similar alcoholic populations: a study of 1,300 patients]

Abstract

The authors refer on introduction to a former research where they describe results from 150 inpatients diagnosed of "Alcohol Dependence" and "Alcohol Abuse Syndromes" admitted during 1980-1984 at the Psychiatry Department of University Hospital of Valladolid. A comparison of epidemiologic, clinic, diagnostic and care patients patterns is made versus three other studies , where similar groups of alcoholic patients are studied through 47 variables. The first investigation reports findings from 613 alcoholic out patients demanding psychiatric care at University Hospital in Valladolid. The second one study 134 alcoholic patients (70% outpatients and 30% inpatients) at the Hospital General in Burgos. The last one reports finding from 403 alcoholic inpatients at the Psychiatric Service of "Ramón y Cajal" Hospital of Madrid. A group of 130 patients are studied as a whole, 1,127 males (86.89%) and 173 females (13.3%). Fifty per cent of the sample (n = 653) were inpatients and the remainder were outpatients; 28.30% (n = 368) were diagnosed by means of CIE-8a; 61.38% (n = 798) by means of CIE-9a; and 10.30 by DSM-III diagnostic criteria. The variables evaluated were population, age, sex, civil state, place of birth, place of living, level of education, profession, work capability, economical status and current social class, working and marriage adaptation, place composition, first work age, emigration, family psychiatric problems, affective deprivation, personal background, former treatment for drinking problems, start of drinking average age, abuse average time, kind of drinking, drinking day average amount, motive of abuse increments, consultation motive, somatic and psychiatric diagnoses, others drugs consultations, TAC and EEG results, first pharmacologic treatment, inpatient average time, and later hospitalizations. A table, a graphic and 83 bibliographic quotations, part of which belong to a former work, are included.