Patient factors predicting early alcohol-related readmissions for alcoholics: role of alcoholism severity and psychiatric co-morbidity

Abstract

The current study was undertaken primarily to identify whether psychiatric co-morbidity was associated with the rate and time of alcohol-related inpatient readmissions for a group of 255 patients discharged from alcoholism treatment at a midwestern rural medical center. A structured interview obtained information regarding psychiatric disorders, including depression, antisocial personality disorders and polysubstance abuse, as well as alcohol history and sociodemographics. Ninety-eight subjects (38.4% of sample) were readmitted for alcoholism-related diagnoses within 15 months of discharge. Patients with a long history of heavy drinking, high daily alcohol consumption and history of previous alcoholism treatment were most likely to be readmitted with an alcoholism-related primary diagnosis. Once these variables were controlled for, other major psychiatric disorders, polysubstances abuse and sociodemographic variables did not appear to predict time to readmission. However, other potentially more sensitive outcome measures such as return to drinking were not evaluated in the present study.