[Alcohol--a perioperative problem of anaesthesia and intensive care medicine]

Alcohol is a socially tolerated drug. Its consumption is associated with several physiological and pharmacological negative side-effects during anaesthesia and intensive care. The impact of chronic and acute alcoholism on perioperative morbidity and mortality and especially on anaesthetic risk are important, due to pharmacological interactions, pathophysiological changes and direct pharmacological interactivities between alcohol and narcotics. In contrast to opioid withdrawal symptoms of alcohol withdrawal are a serious and potentially life-threatening complication and should be avoided or the risk for occurrence must at least be reduced. Patients with a high risk of developing perioperative symptoms of alcohol withdrawal can be detected by laboratory tests and questionnaires. A prophylaxis of withdrawal should be started preoperatively solely with benzodiazepines or in combination with clonidine. Haloperidol is the drug of choice for emerging symptoms of alcohol withdrawal with productive psychosis. To estimate the pharmacological changes during anaesthesia, it is necessary to differentiate whether the patient is an occasional drinker with acute intoxication, a chronic abuser without limitations of hepatic function or a chronic user with insufficiency of the liver. The most important implication for anaesthesia are the choice of a rapid sequence induction to reduce the risk of aspiration and the maintenance of haemodynamic stability and liver perfusion. For the acute alcoholic providing prolonged postoperative surveillance is necessary, for the chronic alcoholic intensive care seems to be mandatory. For regional anaesthesia the indications and limitations are the same as for other patients (cooperativeness, coagulation, consent, etc.).