Alcoholism Common and Serious

Did you know that alcoholism is a serious and common disease? Physicians associate cancers with alcoholism they also see many examples of disease related to alcoholism including alcohol-related cirrhosis, cardiomyopathy, gastrointestinal bleeding and pancreatitis. What more, even those who didn’t actually put the alcohol to their lips suffer the consequences of alcoholism including innocents that suffer from fetal alcohol syndrome, which is a leading cause of mental retardation. There are other serious consequences of alcoholism including the traffic accidents that drinking and driving cause, depression and dementia suffered by those with the disease, suicide, and homicide linked to alcoholism and the risk to children of alcoholic parents that they too might suffer someday the same illness.

Did you know that alcoholism has an affect on every organ in the body? High doses of alcohol can even cause coma and death. Individuals with long-term alcoholism are also prone to experiencing withdrawal syndrome and brain excitability as well as alcohol ingestion, which then leads to cell death and cerebellar degeneration, alcoholic hallucinosis, delirium tremors, and withdrawal seizures.

At risk are those with a family history of alcoholism, those in lower income brackets and those who do not have higher educational achievements. The World Health Organization found that at risk for mental disorders were those who had alcohol dependence.

Alcoholism according to statistics is the third leading cause of death in the U.S. with 85,000 deaths being linked to alcoholism each year in the United States. Another statistic shows that a large percentage of global disease is linked to alcoholism including 7% of breast cancer, 32% of all cirrhosis, 10% of hemorrhagic strokes, 19% of mouth and oropharyngeal cancers, and 25% of liver cancer.

Statistically according to the U.S. National Comorbidity Survey and the Epidemiologic Catchment Area Survey alcoholism in African Americans is higher than it is for those who are Americans and Caucasian as well as higher for those who are Hispanic Americans, Native American or Asian American. Alcoholism is also twice as likely to occur in males than females.

Despite the known danger of alcoholism and how common the disease is, medical doctors fail to make the correct diagnosis of alcoholism in almost 50% of the cases. Patients make diagnosing alcoholism by denying they have a problem when asked, fear of job loss if employer finds out about a diagnosis of alcoholism or too ashamed to admit they have a problem with alcohol.

Sometimes the diagnosis is missed because medical professionals may be unaware of the proper way to screen for and to diagnose alcoholism. It is difficult to have accurate testing to make a diagnosis of alcoholism because blood tests and liver function tests as well as mean corpuscular volume are not always effective. Even the gamma glutamyl transferrin levels test are only 50% accurate.

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