Emergency Medicine CME Courses

By the end of the session the participant will be able to:

• Describe the epidemiology of AUD and outline current and evolving diagnostic criteria
• Describe challenges to the successful identification of patients with AUD
• Identify the treatment modalities currently available for management of AUD and apply them to patient cases using evidence-based medicine
• Develop strategies for recognizing and improving therapeutic adherence in patients treated for AUD

Alcohol use disorder (AUD), referred to colloquially as alcoholism, is an integration of past terms that have include in past as alcohol dependence or abuse, and may be marked by any one of a number of different symptoms or behaviors that include physical cravings, compulsion, guilt, and frequent consumption over an extended period of time. There are about 7.9 million people in the United States who suffer from the disease, but a fraction – 2.2 million people – seek treatment for it. The number of people who are considered heavy drinkers is about double at somewhere between 15.9 and 17.6 million, and just under a quarter of Americans over age 12 reports having engaged in binge drinking at least once in the last month. Alcohol accounts for over 687,000 emergency department visits by people under age 20 per year, and AUD is estimated to cost $223.5 billion per year. Worldwide, 76.3 million people are estimated to have AUDs, and they account for an annual mortality rate of 1.8 million. AUD is largely undertreated, constituting one gap in care and justifying CME