Prevalence of alcohol use in patients of Taubaté University Medicine School [Prevalência de casos suspeitos de alcoolismo no Hospital Universitário de Taubaté - SP]

Abstract

This survey, conducted at the teaching hospital of the Taubaté University Medicine School, had the objective of mensuring the prevalence of harmful alcohol use, during the period between 14/05/96 and 05/07/96, in patients at the departments of internal medicine, surgery, orthopedics, obstetrics-gynecology and emergency room, by the use of the Cage questionnaire. 172 inpatients were interviewed, which resulted in 20,9% with possible alcoholism; 34,1% were men and 8,9% women. Our results are similar with that of other researchers in Brasil and other countries.