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A study of excessive alcohol consumption was carried out on 2,114 adult somatic outpatients. All patients were evaluated by the following methods: Blood-chemical tests (serum gamma-glutamyltransferase (S-GT), serum aspartate aminotransferase (S-ASAT) and ethanol), patient's and doctor's questionnaires, and analysis of data from psychiatric records, social welfare registers and alcohol ambulatory services. Records from psychiatric clinics detected 48% of the patients. Forty per cent of the alcohol patients had S-GT levels greater than 0.9 mu kat/l. S-ASAT and blood ethanol levels were of little informative value. The doctors recognized excessive consumption (greater than 280 g of ethanol/week). The combination of S-GT and questionnaires to patients and doctors detected 63% of the alcohol patients. Both in epidemiological studies and in clinical practice it seems appropriate to use combinations of different methods to detect patients with underlying alcohol problems.
Persson et al. (Tue,) studied this question.
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