[Does chronic alcohol drinking modify digestive gastrobiliary motility?]

In 23 chronic alcoholics and 23 controls gastric emptying, antral motility, fasting gallbladder volume and gallbladder emptying after a standardized, liquid fatty meal were investigated ultrasonically in order to assess the effect of chronic alcoholism on postprandial gastrobiliary motility. Only a subgroup of the alcoholics with signs of autonomic cardiovascular neuropathy (21.7%) exhibited a significant antral hypomotility and a tendency towards higher fasting gallbladder volumes. No significant differences between the study groups could be obtained for the other parameters. The duration and daily amounts of alcohol consumption were not significant different between patients with autonomic neuropathy and patients without autonomic neuropathy. Within the whole group of alcohol consumers the only significant correlation that was observed occurred between the fat induced gallbladder residual volumes and the amounts of daily alcohol consumption (r = 0.62, p < 0.05). However 19 of these 23 relative gallbladder residual volumes were within the normal range (95. percentile of the control group), indicating no major clinical relevance of this phenomenon. None of the motility parameters exhibited a significant correlation to the duration of alcohol consumption. From these results chronic alcohol consumption has no irreversible effects of clinical relevance on the postprandial gastrobiliary motility in the majority of patients in contrast to well documented reversible effects of acute alcohol consumption on gastric motility.