Chronic Alcoholism in a Forensic Material. 2. Causes and Manners of Death in Alcoholics

Abstract

The causes and manners of death in medico-legal cases from a five-year period were examined. Alcoholics died more often of combined alcohol/drug intoxication and of carbon monoxide poisoning. They had a lower frequency of heart diseases, and there was no support for the existence of an alcoholic heart muscle disease. Lobar pneumonia was only found in alcoholics. There were, as expected, higher frequencies of the known alcohol-related diseases such as hepatic coma, bleeding oesophageal varices and alcohol intoxication. An observed higher frequency of death before the age of 35 could be attributed to alcohol-related diseases. The manners of death showed surprisingly small differences, as the main finding was a higher frequency of alcoholics with undeterminable manner of death.