Context
Alcohol use disorder (AUD) is defined by the World Health Organisation as consuming more than 40mg/day of alcohol for males and 30mg/day of alcohol for females. It is estimated that one in six adults in Europe has AUD1. A study performed in a UK ED found that around 20 percent of attendances to the department were linked to alcohol and that around one third of these patients would subsequently require admission to hospital2. In Scotland alone this translated to 35000 alcohol related hospital admissions in 2015/163 representing a significant burden the health service.
It is estimated that between 8-11% of patients with AUD who are admitted to hospital will go on to subsequently develop alcohol withdrawal syndrome (AWS)4,5.