Prevalence of Hypomagnesemia among alcoholic patients

Alcoholic abuse is one of the most common health problems in India and is the third leading preventable cause of death followed by smoking and obesity. Due to alcoholism, a wide range of electrolyte and acid-base imbalance like hypomagnesaemia, hypophosphatemia, hypocalcaemia, hypokalaemia, metabolic acidosis and respiratory alkalosis can occur. Among those, hypomagnesaemia is the most common. Our aim of the study is to find prevalence of hypomagnesaemia among alcoholics and to give them adequate treatment. Better awareness of magnesium as well as other electrolytes like phosphorous, calcium, potassium deficiencies in chronic alcoholics can guide in imparting lifesaving treatment and lesser morbidity in such patients. So, by giving proper treatment to these patients can improve their health condition a lot in a better way.

CAGE questionnaire will be given to all the inpatients admitted to medicine and psychiatry wards for categorizing them as alcoholic and non-alcoholics. it is a quick screening tool for checking the signs of possible alcohol dependency consisting of four questions which focuses on Cutting down, Annoyance by criticism, Guilty feeling and Eye Opener. Serum magnesium values of the alcoholic patients will be assessed and a value less than 1.6mg % will be considered as hypomagnesemia.

Inclusion Criteria: Inpatients admitted to medicine ward at the study institute.

a) Age group: 18-84

b) According to CAGE Criteria

Exclusion Criteria: Presence of concomitant conditions causing magnesium depletion like

1. Intestinal cause (malabsorption syndrome, endocrine & metabolic cause [hypothyroidism, aldosteronism])

2. Renal causes

3. History of intake of drug containing magnesium.

Our sample size is n=224 and study design is Cross sectional study