Characteristics of Laboratory Markers in Alcohol-Related Organ Damage

Abstract

In the evaluation of a patient with either an incidental finding of pathologic laboratory values pointing to alcohol-related organ damage or with more advanced symptoms requiring hospitalization, the history of heavy alcohol intake before hospital admission is strongly suggestive of an alcoholic etiology for the disease. Simplified screening questions and questionnaires may improve the information (for references, see Ref. 1). They identify rather well severe alcoholism with its dismal social consequences, but in the evaluation of a heavy drinker's personal drinking history they are often unreliable. Therefore the search for laboratory markers of heavy drinking (1,2) and/or for the differentiation between alcohol-related and non-alcoholic organ damage (3) has been active during recent years.