Differential mortality among alcoholics by sample site.

In a sample of 1,289 alcoholics from four clinical sites, the overall mortality rate after five to eight years of observation was 22.0 per cent, 3.1 times the expected rate. Patients from the medical and surgical services of a general hospital suffered 4.0 times the rate of expected mortality and died most often of medical causes associated with alcoholism. Patients of the public alcoholism ward had a mortality rate 3.3 times the expected rate and died of causes often associated with low social class. Private psychiatric patients had a mortality rate 2.3 times the expected rate, and psychiatric outpatients had an excess mortality ratio of 2.1. Sample site must be considered as a variable in the study of mortality among alcoholics.