A new study has revealed that alcohol-dependent hospital patients die from multiple morbidities 7.6 years earlier.
University of Bonn Hospital researchers together with British colleagues found that the mortality of alcohol dependent patients in general hospitals is many times higher than that of patients without alcohol dependency. In addition, they die about 7.6 years earlier on average than hospital patients without a history of alcohol addiction.
The researchers are calling for earlier and more intensive psychotherapeutic support of persons with alcohol addictions.
How can I get hold of some alcohol? Addicts' thoughts increasingly focus on this question. As the compulsive drinking behavior increases, other interests are ignored. Typically, persons affected tend to deny their addiction and suffer from withdrawal symptoms and the habituation to alcohol consumption increases. Moreover, alcoholism leads to changes in personality as well as to family and workplace problems.
Researcher Dieter Schoepf said that mental problems as well as significant physical health impairments are associated with alcohol addiction adding that alcoholics who were treated in British general hospitals for health problems die an average of 7.6 years earlier than non-alcohol dependent patients; this is due to the interaction of several concomitant physical illnesses.
A total of 27 physical illnesses occur more often in patients with alcohol addiction: the liver, the pancreas, the airways, the gastrointestinal tract and the nervous system. In contrast to this, heart attacks, cardiovascular disease and cataracts, for instance, occurred less frequently in patients with alcoholism than in the control group.
Schoepf suspected that patients with addiction problems are often admitted to hospitals as emergency cases and at the time of diagnosis, priority is then given to the acute symptoms, which may contribute to the fact that not all physical illnesses are recorded. Reduced pain sensations and perception disorders of addicted persons can also cause certain conditions to not be detected by doctors.
The results indeed relate to general hospitals in Manchester, however they are representative because of the large numbers of random samples and can therefore be transferred to other general hospitals in other countries, said Schoepf.
The study is published in the journal European Psychiatry.
