Alcohol-related disorders among medical and surgical in-patients in a Nigerian teaching hospital.

Background/objectives: Alcohol use disorders exist in a high proportion of hospitalized patients and this often complicates patient management, but a large proportion of them still go unrecognized by the managing clinicians. The objective was to provide data on the proportion of inpatients 18 years and above with alcohol-related disorders, and ability of the managing clinicians to detect these disorders.

Materials And Methods: Alcohol use disorders were assessed in 339 consecutive patients admitted into medical and surgical wards of University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital (UITH), Ilorin, using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV Disorders (SCID) -- Alcohol module, for a period of 5 months.