The hospital treatment of alcoholics in Eastern Slovenia
Abstract
Background: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the number and types of hospitalized alcohol dependents with and without withdrawal symptoms and their laboratory markers in the hospitals of Eastern Slovenia in the years 2002 and 2007. Results: There were 776 alcohol dependent patients in the year 2002 and 672 in the year 2007 discharged from all hospitals. The hospitals differed from each other with respect to the profile of dismissed patients. Apparent is a low number of patients with withdrawal symptoms at the Department of Psychiatry of the University Medical Centre Maribor. In the complex of laboratory examinations in all three hospitals there were only gamma-Glutamyltransferase (GGT), Aspartat-Aminotransferase (AST) and Alanin-Aminotransferase (ALT) as well as mean corpuscular volume (MCV) determined. In the year 2007, all the mean values of alcohol dependency markers were statistically significantly increased as compared to the year 2002, except for MCV in women. Even the shares of pathological values were higher in the year 2007. Conclusions: The number of hospitalized alcoholics and all patients in psychiatric hospitals of the Eastern Slovenia was statistically significantly lower in the year 2007 than in 2002. Even the percentage of hospitalized alcoholics was decreased. The alcoholics hospitalized in 2007 were physically statistically significantly more affected than the alcoholics hospitalized in 2002. The differences in pathological marker values were not so pronounced that they could be used as a predictor of withdrawal symptoms. The most specific laboratory markers of alcoholism, i.e. carbohydrate deficient trasferrin (CDT) and Glutamate Dehydrogenase (GLDH) had not been used in any of the three hospitals.Downloads
The Author transfers to the Publisher (Zdravniški vestnik/Slovenian Medical Journal) all economic copyrights following form Article 22 of the Slovene Copyright and Related Rights Act (ZASP), including the right of reproduction, the right of distribution, the rental right, the right of public performance, the right of public transmission, the right of public communication by means of phonograms and videograms, the right of public presentation, the right of broadcasting, the right of rebroadcasting, the right of secondary broadcasting, the right of communication to the public, the right of transformation, the right of audiovisual adaptation and all other rights of the author according to ZASP.
The aforementioned rights are transferred non-exclusively, for an unlimited number of editions, for the term of the statutory
The Author can make use of his work himself or transfer subjective rights to others only after 3 months from date of first publishing in the journal Zdravniški vestnik/Slovenian Medical Journal.
The Publisher (Zdravniški vestnik/Slovenian Medical Journal) has the right to transfer the rights, acquired parties without explicit consent of the Author.
The Author consents that the Article be published under the Creative Commons BY-NC 4.0 (attribution-non-commercial) or comparable licence.