Prevalence and impact of hazardous alcohol use in intensive care cohort: a multi-center, register-based study.

BACKGROUND: Reports of the prevalence and impact of hazardous alcohol use among intensive care unit (ICU) patients are contradictory. We aimed to study the prevalence of hazardous alcohol use among ICU patients and its association with ICU length of stay (LOS) and mortality.

METHODS: Finnish ICUs have been using the AUDIT-C (Alcohol use disorder identification test-consumption) to evaluate and record patients' alcohol use into the Finnish Intensive Care Consortium's Database (FICC). We retrieved data from the FICC from a three-month period. We excluded data from centers with an AUDIT-C recording rate of less than 70% of admissions. We defined hazardous alcohol use as a score of 5 or more for women and 6 or more for men from a maximum score of 12 points.

RESULTS: 2045 patients were treated in the 10 centers with an AUDIT-C recording rate of 70% or higher. AUDIT-C was available for 1576 (77%) patients and indicated hazardous alcohol use for 334 (21%) patients who were more often younger [median age 55 (interquartile range 42-65) vs 67 (57-74) (p<0.001)] and male [78.1% vs 61.3% (p<0.001)] compared to other patients. We found no difference in LOS or hospital mortality between hazardous and non-hazardous alcohol users. Among the non-abstinent, risk of death within a year increased with increasing AUDIT-C scores, adjusted odds ratio 1.077 (95% confidence interval, 1.006-1.152) per point.

CONCLUSION: The prevalence of hazardous alcohol use in Finnish ICUs was 21%. Patients with hazardous alcohol use were more often younger and male compared with non-hazardous alcohol users.