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March 3, 2021
1 min read
Source / Disclosures
Disclosures:
An author of the study reports that he was a consultant and served on the advisory board of Masimo, a medical device company. The other authors do not report any relevant financial disclosures.
Alcohol withdrawal rates have increased in hospital patients during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the results of a research letter published in JAMA network open.
“This study objectively identified the negative consequences of the pandemic on alcohol withdrawal”, Ram A. Sharma, MD, from the Department of Psychiatry at Christiana Care in Delaware, told Healio Psychiatry. “Alcohol withdrawal rates were 34% higher among hospitalized patients in 2020 than in 2019. To our knowledge, this is the first study to quantify this phenomenon, which was anticipated due to the pandemic.
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Ram A. sharma
Sharma and her colleagues analyzed admission and demographic electronic health record data from inpatients between January 2018 and September 22, 2020, in a large tertiary care hospital system. Using a revised Clinical Institute withdrawal assessment for an alcohol score of eight or higher, they identified inpatients who were diagnosed with alcohol withdrawal and calculated summary statistics for single patients in three time periods in 2020: before, during and after the statewide stay. period at home. They calculated alcohol withdrawal incidence rates for bimonthly periods in 2018, 2019 and 2020. Additionally, they used the same periods in 2019 and the average of 2018 and 2019 as a benchmark to calculate the rate ratios. incidence and 95% confidence intervals for each period in 2020, which explained the seasonal variations.
Data were available on 340 patients diagnosed with alcohol withdrawal before the stay-at-home order, 231 diagnosed during the stay-at-home period and 507 diagnosed after the stay-at-home period. The results showed similar patient characteristics between the three time periods. Hospitalized patients had a consistently higher alcohol withdrawal rate in 2020 compared to 2019 and the 2018 and 2019 average; however, the difference was greater in the period following the stay-at-home order. The incidence rate ratio was highest in 2020 compared to 2019 in the last 2 weeks of the stay-at-home order (IRR = 1.84; 95% CI, 1.3-2.6 ). Alcohol withdrawal rates among hospitalized patients increased by 34% in 2020 during the pandemic compared to the same period in 2019 (IRR = 1.34; 95% CI, 1.22-1.48).
“Increased vigilance and more screening are needed to identify alcohol withdrawal in hospitalized patients for better management,” said Sharma. “In addition, early interventions for alcohol use disorders will play a crucial role in addressing this problem in the near future.
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