Social and administrative characteristics of patients with alcohol withdrawal in a Romanian sample

Abstract

Introduction: Alcohol related disorders represent a frequent pathology in psychiatry, one of these being alcohol withdrawal. There are not enough studies in order to certainly say that we can characterize these patients from a social and administrative point of view. Objectives: The purpose of this research was to study the social and administrative characteristics of patients with alcohol withdrawal in a Romanian sample. Methods: There were 2460 patients diagnosed with an alcohol related psychiatric disorder out of which 888 presented with alcohol withdrawal at the emergency room in ”Alexandru Obregia” Psychiatric Hospital from Bucharest during 1st of January 2017 and 31st December 2017. Results: Out of all patients, 68.8% had a discharge diagnosis of alcohol dependence and 31.2% of alcohol abuse, 43% of patients came alone at the emergency room and the most frequent admission diagnosis was alcohol intoxication. Amongst the patients admitted with alcohol withdrawal syndrome 36.49% developed complicated withdrawal symptoms and 89.79% of these were transferred from another hospital. We found that patients presenting with alcohol withdrawal had longer hospitalization periods, were usually transferred, lacked aggressive behavior at admission and almost half of them were uninsured. Moreover transferred patients were at a higher risk of developing complicated withdrawal than patients presenting alone or brought by ambulance. Conclusions: There are numerous social and administrative factors that characterize the patient presenting with alcohol withdrawal but more studies are needed in order to fully elucidate the degree of implication of each factor.