CONTEXT The oropharynx microbiota plays an important role in the origin of infections, especially among alcoholics whose airway defenses are impaired. OBJECTIVE To compare the normal oropharingeal flora in heavy alcohol drinker and non-alcoholics. PATIENTS 117 persons, 58 heavy alcohol drinkers and 59 non-alcoholics. SETTING Santa Casa de São Paulo Emergency Service. DESIGN A blind pros...

BACKGROUND Chronic alcoholism is accompanied by "frontal" neuropsychological deficits that include an inability to maintain focus of attention. This might be associated with pronounced involuntary attention shifting to task-irrelevant stimulus changes and, thereafter, an impaired reorienting to the relevant task. The neural abnormalities that underlie such deficits in alcoholics were explored w...

The contribution of head injuries to neuropsychological deficits was studied in 157 recently detoxified alcoholics and 400 control subjects consisting of age-stratified randomly selected men and women from the same geographical area as the alcoholics. Head injuries had occurred in 41% and 22% of the male and female alcoholics, but only in 15% and 6% of the male and female control subjects. One ...

BACKGROUND Alcoholism is considered as a major health as well as a social problem. Often the family members of alcoholics suffer intense psychological, physical and social trauma due to the core drinking problem of the family member. Most deeply affected are the wives of alcoholics. AIM The present descriptive study aimed to investigate the problems faced and coping strategies used by the wiv...

A previous study has shown a high incidence of abnormal auditory brainstem responses in alcoholics, particularly when cerebral and/or cerebellar atrophy was present in CT scans. To correlate the electrophysiological findings with definable morphological alterations, quantitative measurements of the brainstem structures in CT scans were made. To determine the relative size of the brainstem, the ...

A retrospective study of 30 patients (12 alcoholics and 18 nonalcoholics) was performed to determine whether the fracture healing time (T) was longer in alcoholics and smokers. Fracture healing time (mean ± standard error) was longer in alcoholics (24.1 ± 5.8 weeks vs. 11.4 ±1.1 weeks in nonalcoholics, p=0.001) and in 21 smokers (15.8 ± 2.9 weeks) vs. 9 nonsmokers (18.2 ± 5.9 weeks) (p=0.045). ...

225 alcoholics in village and 149 alcoholics in a mental hospital outpatients were administered screening questionnaires for alcoholics status (MAST) dependence (SADD), and consumption data (Q.F. Index). All of them underwent GGT and MCV estimation within 48 hours of last drinking. Comparison of laboratory test with the questionnaires revealed that questionnaires were more useful in community a...

OBJECTIVE The usefulness of measuring four types of alcohol-outcome expectancies in alcoholics was investigated. METHOD The investigation was conducted in three steps. First, a measurement model previously fitted in a general population sample was fitted in the present sample of alcoholics, using confirmative factor analysis. In the hierarchical model tested, four types of expectancies are re...