Inpatient withdrawal treatment of patients suffering from alcohol addiction in Berlin (1993-1999)

Abstract

On account of the Hospital Statistics Regulation from 1990 all hospitals have to run a diagnosis-related and regionally structured hospital documentation, beginning with the year 1993. In the State of Berlin, this routine documentation from 74 hospitals of Berlin is centralised in the Statistics State Office. We obtained the data records with the main diagnosis alcoholism (303 ICD 9) for the years 1993 to 1999 for evaluation. The treatment frequency is male dominated with average yearly 400 vs. 100 female cases per 100 000 inhabitants. In East Berlin men reached due to continuous increase of cases for the first time in 1998 higher values in comparison with West Berlin. The treatment frequency of female West Berlin patients is in the period under review continually about twice as high than that of female East Berlin patients. The age peak for both sexes lies between 40 and < 50 years. The patients were especially treated in the wards of "psychiatry" (ca. 40 %), of "addiction diseases" (ca. 30 %) and "internal medicine" (ca. 23 %). The average hospital retention period was reduced from 22 (1993) to 12 days (1999).