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How Alcoholics Die

Short-term alcoholism mortality studies have limited applications for longterm, comprehensive treatment program planning. There was a need for longer-term research. This San Antonio study followed alcoholics for more than 33 years after they were discharged from treatment in order to examine how, when, and why they died.

Researchers followed 500 alcoholics – admitted in five groups of 100 in 1963, 1964, 1967, 1970 and 1972 to community-based treatment – for 33 to 42 years. Their deaths were tracked and case-fatality and cause-specific mortality rates were calculated. Although whites generally tended to live longer, all three racial/ethnic groups died either from lifestyle behaviors (including accidents, homicide, suicide and trauma of all sorts) at young ages, early in the followup period, or at older ages from cancer and diseases of the lung. Study authors recommend that comprehensive treatment programs address lifestyle issues soon after discharge and the prevention of organ diseases later in life.

(Costello,RM: Long-term mortality from alcoholism: a descriptive analysis. Journal of Studies on Alcohol 67:694-699, 2006.)

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