Abuso de alcohol y deterioro cognitivodiagnóstico y rehabilitación

Abstract

There is some evidence that abusive consumption of alcohol results in cognitive impairment, which in some cases, might be brought back with alcohol withdrawal. However, very little research has been done on the scope of the impairment and the scale of the spontaneous recovery. Thus, this research wanted to know what functions are affected and how they evolve, as well as to develop and carry out a new intervention to try to improve recovery, investigating also the effects of the sum of training. One hundred patients participated, during the first stage, in cohorts with different alcohol withdrawal times, and 20 control people. Twenty-seven cognitive variables (including MoCA and MMSE), as well as clinical and socio-demographic data were collected. Differences among variables were observed during initial impairment and during improvement, as well as an association with the age of onset of alcohol consumption. In a second stage, longitudinally oriented, 60 patients giving up alcohol, were trained with press pastimes, in the functions where the greatest benefit might be expected (attention, memory and language), as observed in the first stage. Results have shown notable advances in recovery, overcoming withdrawal, and let us conclude that simple materials can provide important benefits that result both in rehabilitation, and in the reintegration of ex-alcoholics.