A clinical assessment of the consequences of alcohol consumption in 'communal' drinkers in the Zimbabwean Midlands.

The study was undertaken to clinically assess the consequences of alcohol consumption in 'communal' drinking patients whose levels of alcohol consumption could not be determined accurately in grams of alcohol. The level of alcohol consumed by 100 adult 'communal' drinking medical patients per drinking session was scored on a scale 0-10. The score was based on a qualitative impression of how much alcohol was drunk, level of consciousness, behaviour and gait. The frequency of drinking days in a week was scored on a 0-7 scale. The duration of drinking in years prior to registration at the clinic was also recorded. The pattern of diseases among the drinkers was compared to that of 70 adult non-drinkers. The individual diseases were ranked to association with alcohol consumption by the Kruskal-Wallis Test. The drinkers attained a mean level score of 5.75 +/- 2.16, a frequency of 4.75 +/- 2.4 days but the duration of prior drinking varied greatly. Gout, dilated cardiomyopathy, epilepsy and hypertension ranked highest in that order to alcohol usage. Rheumatic heart disease and Diabetes mellitus ranked low. The probability significance were, for level score p = 0.005, frequency p = 0.016 and duration p = 0.001. This method was able to identify the morbid chronic medical diseases associated with alcohol usage in 'communal' drinkers. There is a need to evaluate it against a known screening instrument like the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT).