Sunday, August 5, 2012

Preoperative alcohol cessation prior to elective surgery



Full text source http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD008343.pub2/abstract

Source

It is hard to convince the folks at the Cochrane Database, but a meta-analysis of two randomized studies showed that "intensive alcohol cessation interventions including pharmacological strategies for alcohol withdrawal and relapse prophylaxis" significantly reduced post operative complications with an impressive odds ratio of 0.22 (95% confidence interval (CI) 0.08 to 0.61; p = 0.004)

There was no significant reduction of in-hospital and 30-day mortality. Although the odds ratio was 0.39; the 95% CI was 0.06 to 2.83 (p = 0.35).

The take home message for our work is that admitting people for alcohol withdrawal treatment prior to surgery is a good thing.

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