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Practice Commentary
Donald Kollisch, MD
Arch Fam Med. 1993;2(11):1150.
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| Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings. |
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One of the great challenges and satisfactions of patient care is to get below the surface diagnoses to the underlying ones. Our patients' presenting complaint is only the beginning of the story, and it is up to us to figure out what else is going on. The complex study by Sherbourne et al1 reminds us of just how murky the deeper waters are. As difficult as it may be to follow some of their statistical methods, assumptions, and corrections, the authors demonstrate, as many others have before, that alcohol problems are common in our patients with chronic medical illnesses. They educate us further by finding that alcohol is particularly common in those patients who are depressed as well as organically ill.
Unfortunately, they also find, as many other researchers have before, that physicians do not do a particularly good job of recognizing and treating the hidden alcohol problem. In this study,1 the relatively higher
. . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]
Author Affiliations
University of North Carolina School of Medicine Chapel Hill
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