Cardiovascular Study of 100 Chronic Alcoholics

Clinical, ECG, X‐ray and laboratory findings are reported in a series of 100 male chronic alcoholics aged from 23 to 63 years and hospitalized for psychiatric and social reasons. Eighty per cent of the patients were periodic drinkers, and in 80 per cent alcoholism had lasted for more than 10 years. Although palpitation, extrasystoles, dyspnea and chest pain were usual complaints, no definite cases of alcoholic cardiomyopathy were found. The ECG abnormalities recorded were of about the same order as found in other groups of Finnish men of the same age except for sinus tachycardia (21 per cent) and prolongation of the Q‐T time (7 per cent). One third of the patients had chronic cough, 17 had signs of old tuberculous lung disease, 52 had enlargement and/or tenderness of the liver. Anemia and hypomagnesemia were recorded in 55 and 42 per cent, respectively. Failure to detect cardiomyopathy in this study is considered to be due to the low incidence of specific heart disease in alcoholics or perhaps to the periodic type of drinking with poor caloric intake during the drinking bouts in most of the patients in the present material.