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THE SYNDROMES of acute alcohol withdrawal have been well defined, 1 but despite a large number of patients, relatively little is known of the metabolic changes accompanying withdrawal. Abnormalities in electrolyte metabolism during this acute phase have been reported, 2-4 but few prospective studies have been carried out. However, it has been reported that no significant alteration occurs in the serum electrolytes of normal volunteers during recovery from ingestion of large quantities of alcohol 5,6 ; in addition, no abnormalities were observed in a small series of chronic alcoholic patients. 7 During observation and evaluation of chronic alcoholic patients undergoing withdrawal at San Francisco General Hospital it was noted that the levels of serum potassium were frequently low and that cardiac arrhythmias and alterations in the ST segment, T, and U waves in the electrocardiograms were common. Consequently, a study was undertaken to determine the frequency and severity of hypokalemia

RECENT evidence suggests a relationship in humans between reduction of stage-4 sleep (viz, high voltage, slow waves) and varying degrees of thought disturbance. Notable are the reports of marked decrease in stage-4 patterning in chronic schizophrenic patients 1-6 and patients with depression and manic-depressive illness, depressed phase. 7-10 Moreover, Feinberg and Carlson 11 observed stage-4 sleep to be a hyperbolic function of age, with verbal performance IQ a parabolic function showing maximum decline at periods of minimum stage-4 sleep. Hallucinations accompanying the symptoms of acute alcohol withdrawal were found to be inversely related to amount of stage-4 sleep. 12 The present investigation studied the allnight sleep electroencephalograms and power-density configurations for a group of psychotic and normal prepuberal children. Particular attention was focused on whether stage-4 sleep was affected in the psychotic population who were clearly manifesting thought disorders. Methods Subjects.—This study included 12 boys and seven

Background Alcohol consumption can have adverse social, legal, occupational, psychological, and medical consequences. The prevalence of alcohol-use disorders is high in Emergency Departments. The novel establishment of a Quick Diagnostic Unit (QDU) in an ED setting has allowed expeditious and focused, medically supervised acute alcohol withdrawal. The purpose of the study was to describe the alcohol-use disorder clientele and treatment in this new setting.