Acute alcohol intoxication: prevalence, recognition and medicolegal importance

To highlight the clinical criteria of persons who are accused of being under the intoxicating effect of alcohol brought to medicolegal officer by the police.

Included cases of alcohol intoxication reported to the medicolegal sections of three major government hospitals of Karachi i.e., Jinnah Post Graduate Medical Centre, Civil Hospital and Abbasi Shaheed Hospital, Karachi, during the period January to December 1996.

During one year of study, 338 persons were brought from police stations all over Karachi to the medicolegal sections of the above three hospitals. Out of these, 260 persons were disposed off by the medicolegal officers by use of their clinical judgement, 78 persons were suspected to be under the effect of alcohol intoxication and were referred to the chemical examiner where urine and blood analysis for alcohol was positive in 40 and negative in 38 cases. Only one fatal case of alcohol intoxication was reported to the chemical examiner and the viscera sent for examination were positive for alcohol.

The incidence of the positive cases of alcohol intoxication on laboratory analysis was 11.8% while negative results were obtained in 11.2% cases, out of 23% cases referred to the chemical examiner, indicating that the bulk of cases i.e. 76.9% were disposed off on clinical criteria only which is a crude method of assessment of cases of acute alcohol intoxication.