ZAD Alcohol Detoxification Treatment– Sec. 15

Authors Note: - Zero Alcohol Drink – Alcohol Detoxification Clinical Therapy (ZAD-ADCT) is the most important Document so far in my ZAD venture. It was first published in 2005. In this blog publication, I divide it into its several small “subtitle” sections and post it one by one so to make it more appropriate to the blog reading.

This is its Fifteenth section.


ZAD-ADCT Patients Selection and Screening Modalities

In my previous paper[2] I have explained that the basic diagnostic criteria for the alcohol dependent patients to get admission into this ZAD Clinical Therapy is the ICD-10[8] or the DSM-IV[9] classified norms! In addition the CAGE, AUDIT, MAST and other such diagnostic instruments may help to verify their diagnosis! Moreover, the person should be drinking daily an average of 6 or more drinks to get qualified into this clinical trial therapy! Most importantly, to exploit its full potential in today’s alcoholism treatment and to subject it to a severe test, we would like to select mainly those who have been admitted for getting alcohol detoxification treatment more than once and have some history of relapse, constantly failing in their total abstinence resolve and falling back into dependence! Nevertheless, as mentioned before, those alcohol dependent people who have known to reject or never to really accept the total abstinence option in their recovery for whatever reasons but at the same time “attempt” or “try” to reduce their alcohol consumption, will be exempted from this last rule!

By the way, it is very important also to know that its screening procedures promptly disqualifies those patients having some extreme or severe health conditions. First of all, it would exclude all those alcohol dependent patients who are in an emergency or life threatening situations or having chronic disease like liver, heart, kidney etc. ‘Patients should be also excluded if they are currently in delirium tremens, actively psychotic, suicidal or had severe memory difficulties [19], or those having a history or violent or threatening behaviors or having co-dependence on other strong psychoactive drugs like; heroine, cocaine, designers drug etc. Also the persons having some grave socio-economic, (unemployment, marital, homeless etc.) problems may be excluded or kept out of this ZAD-ADCT program at this beginning stage.

This screening procedure necessarily needs to inquire some detailed accounts of the patients fast drinking patterns! This may come in the form a fill-in questionnaire! First to know some details about their social, economical, marital, educational, age, sex etc., status or backgrounds. Since how many years he/she has been drinking and facing the alcohol problem? The kind of alcoholic beverage (spirit, wine, beer) they were consuming during these time of alcohol dependence? Their favorite drinks any in particular? What are the alcoholic beverages that they usually consume? How many days in a week in average they drink? What time of the day that they usually take to their drinking and how long their drinking session usually lasts, how many drinks they usually (in average) consume in these each sessions. How much do they titrate to make their drink lower alcohol content while they drink it? What are their reasons for doing or not doing it? What place or environment where they usually conduct their drinking? Home, bars, alone, friends, company? In the fast year particularly in the last month or weeks what is his/her daily average alcohol consumption? How many days exceeding the safe drinking limits? How many days or incidence of binge drinking? This questionnaire session conducted once earlier in the preliminary part. Such detailed accounts of the patient past alcohol consumption not only useful in understanding the background history of the patient alcoholism but also become very useful in the future follow up and the observational period to determine the rate of success or failure or the long term overall outcome of this treatment.

Here I should also add that while getting admitted into this therapy, the Blood Alcohol Count (BAC) levels of the patients may need to be checked and monitored whenever required during the first, second and the third weeks of the trials to check the progress of the alcohol detoxification for the physical evidence and for the research study documentation!


(See its following part in the next post.)

Valerian Texeira.
http://www.geocities.com/scientific_misconduct
http://www.geocities.com/alcoholics_curewell
http://alcohol-research-misconduct.blogspot.com
http://alcoholicscurewell.blogspot.com